giant 'tao lin information for journalists' post

BIOGRAPHY

Tao Lin (b. 1983, Alexandria VA) grew up in Orlando FL and lives in Brooklyn NY. He is the author of 6 books of fiction/poetry & has a B.A. in Journalism from NYU. Wikipedia. Selected blog posts.

Tao's second novel RICHARD YATES will be published September 07 2010 by Melville House. His previous books are the poetry-collection YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM (2006), which is regularly a bestseller (#2, #2, #1); the story-collection BED (2007); the novel EEEEE EEE EEEE (2007); the poetry-collection COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (2008), which has been assigned in college-level psychology courses; the novella SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL (2009), which was available at Urban Outfitters.

Tao's books have been translated and published (or are forthcoming) in Japan, Germany, France, Norway, Spain, Serbia, South Korea, China, Taiwan. Two of his books, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL & EEEEE EEE EEEE, were optioned for film in early 2010. His writing has been published in/on Gawker, Noon, Vice, Esquire, Poetry Foundation, The Stranger, Mississippi Review, Nerve, Adbusters, bear parade (who in 2006 published e-books of his poetry, stories, and collaboration with Ellen Kennedy entitled hikikomori).

Tao's financial situation was featured in/on The Guardian, The Observer, a New York Times blog, Gawker, The Telegraph. He edits Muumuu House which was featured in the March 2009 Nylon Magazine.

SELECTED PRESS

Feature, Associated Press (September 2010)
Feature, Nylon (August 2010)
Feature, New York Observer (August 2010)
Feature, Salon (August 2010
Feature, The Atlantic (August 2010)
Feature, The Daily Beast (September 2009)
Feature, The Guardian (August 2009)
Feature, Nylon (March 2009)
Feature, New York Magazine (January 2009)
Feature, Paste
Feature, Time Out New York

Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / The Guardian
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / San Francisco Chronicle
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Austin Chronicle
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Los Angeles Times
Review, SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / Time Out New York
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / San Francisco Bay Guardian
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE & BED / Hipster Book Club
Review, EEEEE EEE EEEE / Bookslut
Review, BED / The Stranger
Review, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY / The Constant Critic
Review, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM / Time Out Chicago

Interview, Interview (August 2010)
Interview, KCRW's Bookworm (December 2009)
Interview, The Millions w/ Deb Olin Unferth (October 2009)
Interview, The Rumpus (September 2009)
Interview, NYU Local
Interview, Canongate's blog w/ Chris Killen
Interview, NYU Local
Interview, BBC Radio 2
Interview, ANP Quarterly Issue 10

SELECTED LITERATURE

Poem, a poem written by a bear
Poem, some of my happiest moments in life occur on AOL instant messenger
Poem, i went fishing with my family when i was Five
Poem, Opposite Of Song Of Myself
Poems, [first seven pages of COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY]
Poems, [twenty-four poems (twelve in comments section)]
Poems, A Stoic Philosophy... & The Power of Ethical Reasoning

Fiction, Sasquatch
Fiction, Leftover Crack in Red Hook
Fiction, Love is a Thing on Sale For More Money Than There Exists
Fiction, Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days
Fiction, [from North American Hamsters]
Fiction, The Disappointed Ant
Fiction, The Vegan Muffin
Fiction, Should
Fiction, October
Fiction, Exactly What I Want

Essay, "Audrey" from "Shoplifting from American Apparel"
Essay, An Account of Being Arrested for "Trespassing" NYU's Bookstore
Essay, Review of Ten "Blogging Platforms"
Essay, Marina Abramović, “The Staring Woman at MoMA”
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "good/bad in art"
Essay, @Poetry Foundation re "relationships/poetry"
Essay, Review of Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard
Essay, What I Can Tell You About Seattle Based on the People I've Met Who Are From There
Essay, Levels of Greatness a Fiction Writer can Achieve in America
Essay, Fighting Elliott Bay Audience
Essay, Cho Seung-Hui's Killing Rampage

BLURBS

“Richard Yates is a moving, very funny, discomforting, and heartbreakingly life-affirming meditation on extremes—extreme alienation, extreme intimacy, extreme confusion, extreme expectations—that reads like a meticulously and lovingly crafted collaboration between a weirder Ernest Hemingway and a more philosophically-minded Jean Rhys.”
—James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces

"Richard Yates is hilarious, menacing, and hugely intelligent. Tao Lin is a Kafka for the iPhone generation. He has that most important gift: it’s impossible to imagine anyone else writing like he does and sounding authentic. Yet he has already spawned a huge school of Lin imitators. As precocious and prolific as he is, every book surpasses the last. Tao Lin may well be the most important writer under thirty working today."
—Clancy Martin, author of How To Sell

"[Richard Yates] is like a ninety-foot pigeon. You've never seen anything like it before, and yet it is somehow exactly like the world we live in."
—Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs

"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass - from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."
—Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You

"[F]ascinating and articulate in a way that people my age (incl. um, like, you know, myself) rarely are...I still think he's a scam artist but now I think the scam is interesting."
—Emily Gould, author of And The Heart Says Whatever

"Do you read Tao Lin and think 'I love this! What is it?' Perhaps it is the curious effect of a radically talented, fecund and tender mind setting down a world sans sense or consequence."
—Lore Segal, author of Other People's Houses and Shakespeare's Kitchen

"Trancelike and often hilarious…reminiscent of early Douglas Coupland, or early Bret Easton Ellis, but there is also something going on here that is more profoundly peculiar, even Beckettian…deliciously odd.”
—The Guardian

"[A] deadpan literary trickster."
—The New York Times

"Lin's fiction is a wonderfully deadpan joke."
—The Independent

"You don't think, 'I like this guy,' or 'I really dislike this guy.' You think, 'huh.' [...] Camus' The Stranger or 'sociopath?'"
—Los Angeles Times

"[D]eeply smart, funny, and heads-over-heels dedicated."
—Sam Anderson, New York Magazine

"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] the purest example so far of the minimalist aesthetic as it used to be enunciated."
—Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm

"[SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL is] somehow both the funniest and the saddest book I've read in a long time."
—Michael Schaub, Bookslut

"Writing about being an artist makes most contemporary artists self-conscious, squeamish and arch. Lin, however, appears to be comfortable, even earnest, when his characters try to describe their aspirations (or their shortcomings)….Purposefully raw.”
—Time Out New York

"Lin's sympathetic fascination with the meaning of life is full of profound and often hilarious insights."
—Publishers Weekly

“Tao Lin's poetry passes by slacker era irony and self-indulgent formalism to dig up something deeper and more human, even when that something seems on first reading to merely be depressed hamsters. ”
—Jeffrey Brown, author of Clumsy and Little Things

"Tao Lin is the most distinctive young writer I've come upon in a long time: the most intrepid, the funniest, the strangest. He's a new voice, and the pleasure of reading his work is a new kind of pleasure."
—Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening

"Loved it. [...] Shoplifting From American Apparel stands out. And maybe it’s similar, if stylistically opposite, from We Did Porn in this way. Both books are necessary, written for people who don’t have many books to choose from. They’re not competing with the rest of the books on the shelf. They’re on a different shelf where there aren’t too many books. On that same shelf you’ll find Ask The Dust, Frisk, The Fuck Up, The Basketball Diaries, Jesus' Son, several books by Michelle Tea, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Chelsea Girls. It’s a good shelf to be on, I think. Young, urban, self-sure, engaged. The audience is small but they’ll take you in; they’re looking to connect."
—Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby and The Adderall Diaries