About A Field Guide to the Subterranean
Justin Hocking grew up in a part of Colorado where so many things happened beneath the surface—mining exploits, underground nuclear testing just thirty miles from his family’s home, and geothermal activity that heats one of the world’s largest hot springs pools. His homelife, too, was plagued by an underground pattern of abuse and virulent masculinity. A Field Guide to the Subterranean charts the author’s lifelong process of unearthing the past and reclaiming his own identity and connection to the natural world.
How might we transform our traumas into deeper care for each other and the landscapes that sustain us? How do we transcend the mythos of the rugged American male so rooted in extraction and exploitation? And how far can we move beyond the self in a memoir? Hocking explores these and other vital questions by combining personal narrative with expansions into geology, ecology, gender theory, mining history, labor rights, and even skateboarding.
Abundant with historical research and teeming with birdlife—and ranging in location from remote caves and mountains to secluded surf breaks in Costa Rica—A Field Guide to the Subterranean heralds a boldly original and kaleidoscopic approach to the genre of nature writing.
Justin Hocking served as Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) from 2006 to mid-2014, and remains active in creative community-building, small-press publishing, and the synthesis of book arts with literary pursuits. His first memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, won the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award. Wonderworld was also a Barnes and Nobel Discover Great New Writers selection, a Library Journal "Best Books of 2014" pick, and one of "Ten Brilliant Books That Will Grab You From Page One" in The Huffington Post and Kirkus Reviews. He 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, Portland Review, The Portland Noir Anthology, Tin House online, Poets & Writers Magazine, Swap/Concessions, Rattapallax, The Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. He also serves as a contributing editor for the The Normal School magazine.
He is a co-founder, with A.M. O'Malley, of the IPRC's yearlong Certificate Program in Creative Writing, which pairs advanced writing workshops with intensive instruction in letterpress printing, book arts, graphic design, and printing. He currently teaches nonfiction, fiction, and publishing in the BFA and MFA writing programs at Portland State University.
Justin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University, and has participated in residencies at Sitka Center For Art and Ecology, Signal Fire, and The Sou’wester. He is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship for fiction and four Regional Arts and Culture Council Project Grant awards.