Beautifully designed and showcasing the best of both well-known writers and rising stars, Tin House has pulled out of the pack to gain a reputation as the most important of contemporary literary magazines. Outsider literature, like outsider art and music, has become increasingly popular in our corporatized, consumerist society. The Spring theme issue of Tin House examines this trend in depth. Subtitled “Off the Grid,” this special issue includes powerful work by or about people or institutions that function — or don’t — out of the bounds of “normal” society. Highlighting a unique kind of raw creativity unmediated by formal training or standard narrative strategies, the issue includes a “Lost & Found” section that contains brief appreciations of texts written outside of conventional publishing, writings done in prison and mental institutions, exile and “in secret,” and in fantastic realms beyond.
