Win McCormack

Win McCormack is a writer, editor, and publisher who holds a B.A. from Harvard College in political science and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Oregon. He has been in the magazine and book businesses since 1975, when he founded Oregon Magazine and took over publication of the popular Guide to Eating Out In Portland. While serving as Editor-in-Chief, he wrote a monthly column on the incendiary conduct of the Indian guru Bhagwan Sheree Rajneesh, who had settled his militant cult in Central Oregon after fleeing his home country.  The columns won a joint commendation from the City-Regional Magazine Association and the University of Kansas for investigative journalism, and  have been published in book form—under the title The Rajneesh Chronicles: The True Story of the Cult That Unleashed the First Act of Bioterrorism on U.S. Soil—first by New Oregon Publishers in 1987 and again in 2010 by Tin House Books on the 25th anniversary of the cult’s collapse. Zando will be presenting a new, fully updated version of the book in the fall of 2027. 

After selling Oregon Magazine in 1988, McCormack invested in and sat on the boards of several other magazines, including Art and Auction and Military History Quarterly. Then, in 1999, he launched  the literary journal Tin House, which over the next twenty years was considered by many to be the leading exemplar of imaginative fiction and poetry in America. The magazine also spawned Tin House Books and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop (now the Oregon Writers’ Workshop). Upon acquiring The New Republic in 2016, McCormack closed Tin House magazine and, in 2025, sold Tin House Books to Zando, which he considers the ideal home for his beloved creation.