All Tomorrow's Parties

Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House magazine, has led a life defined by restless searching. Born in Germany to two extremely driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in the epicenter of a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression, and the artistic lives surrounding him never felt more authentic. From backstage dressing rooms to the front rows of concert halls, Spillman was inspired to live for art—nothing was more romantic or ideal.In his early twenties, after an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents and different homes, 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 bullet-pocked streets of East...