A critically acclaimed author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld heralds an radically inventive and kaleidoscopic approach to the genre of nature writing and memoir
A Field Guide to the Subterranean is about the lessons of hard-won renewal and the ad hoc spiritual rigging we sometimes have to create to overcome existential challenges, Hocking uses various modes-personal narrative, natural history, suspenseful narrative nonfiction, geology-to demonstrate the ways in which the environment, not just our polluted natural surroundings but the façade of the rugged American character, thwart authentic self-knowledge and connection to the world. In particular, Hocking reckons with toxic elements found in Gen X skateboarding, the Outward Bound type of miseducation about the environment, and the Men's Movement from Robert Bly machismo to proto Incel/Proud Boy cultures which led him to struggle to accept his own individuality. Living Frost's adage that "the only way out is through," Hocking boldly mines his self, finding footholds in natural wonder, birding, surfing, a generous partner, service, to climb back out and regain his life. JUSTIN HOCKING is the author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld. He served as Executive Director of Portland's Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) from 2006 to mid-2014 and is a recipient of the Willamette Writers' Humanitarian Award for his work in publishing, writing, and teaching, and was named as one of "Ten Writers Who Made Portland" by Willamette Week. His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in the Rumpus, Orion Magazine, The Normal School, Tin House, Poets & Writers Magazine, and elsewhere. He works as an Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies MA Program at Pacific Northwest College of Art, and a full-time faculty member in nonfiction and publishing in the undergraduate and MFA writing programs at Portland State University. He is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship for fiction and four Regional Arts and Culture Council Project Grant awards. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
