Rob Spillman discusses his memoir "All Tomorrow’s Parties" with author Ben Percy

From the award-winning cofounder and editor of Tin House magazine comes an intimate, spirited memoir of a rebellious young man's fierce pursuit of an artistic life and a portrait of Berlin in the midst of a cultural renaissance.

Rob Spillman has devoted his life to the restless pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, suppressed dreams and freedom of expression.

After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman’s formative years as a teenager were shaped by reading Hunter S. Thompson and Ken Kesey and listening to everything from punk to the classical concert halls and festivals where his father was a well-respected pianist and composer. Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home.

Rob will discuss his memoir with Ben Percy. Percy is the author of the novels The Dead Lands, Red Moon and The Wilding, and two short story collections, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk. His writing has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Time, Tin House and elsewhere. His honors include the Pushcart Prize, an NEA grant, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and a Whiting Award. Raised in the high desert of central Oregon, he lives in Northfield, Minnesota.

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Rob Spillman is editor of Tin House magazine and editorial advisor of Tin House Books. He was previously the monthly book columnist for Details magazine and is a contributor of book reviews and essays to Salon and Bookforum. He has written for the Boston Review, GQ, Details, the New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, among other magazines, newspapers, and online magazines. He has also worked for Random House, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, and taught at various MFA programs, including Columbia University.