Saturday, July 25, 2026
5:30-7:00pm
Free to attend!
Sponsored by the Oregon Community Foundation. Please register in advance; walk-ins welcome as space allows. Optional donations are appreciated.
With themes of transformation, healing, and tipping points, the Manzanita Writers Series welcomes award-winning author Justin Hocking to read from his latest work, A Field Guide to the Subterranean, and open to a conversation with Q&A from the audience.
Books will be available for sale and author signing at the event through Cloud & Leaf Bookstore.
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.
Praise for A Field Guide:
"A Field Guide to the Subterranean digs deeply down into the earth with powerful questions about who we are and what we've made with our time on the planet. Justin Hocking has created a profound geological journey of the soul, unearthing wisdom about masculinity, the colonization of land and people, and the possibility that we might recover our own hearts if we are willing to be in intimate relationship to the non-human world. A geo love song."
—Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Chronology of Water: A Memoir and Reading The Waves: A Memoir
"This book is a marvel of excavation into the stories we tell about land and self. I devoured it in a day, and emerged seeing the world with both more glitter and more shadow, Hocking’s luminous, lyrical voice echoing in my ear. Reading A Field Guide to the Subterranean somehow feels both like going on a round-the-world adventure and curling up on the couch to converse with an old friend."
—Erica Berry, author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear
“Justin Hocking is a wizard who crafts his stories with equal measures of passion, poetry, and erudition. His writing voice makes you want to follow him to the end of the Earth, or into its deepest caverns, so that he can show you all the beautiful and amazing things to be found there.”
—Hector Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark: The Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free
About the Author:
Justin Hocking is the author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir, which won the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. He also received 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. Along with an MFA in Creative Writing, he holds a BA in Psychology and a Foundations Training Certificate from the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. He currently teaches in the MFA and BFA Program in Creative Writing at Portland State University, and his most recent memoir, A Field Guide to the Subterranean, is a finalist for the 2026 Oregon Book Award.
For more information about Justin, please visit his website.
Saturday, July 25, 2026
5:30-7:00pm
Free to attend!
Sponsored by the Oregon Community Foundation. Please register in advance; walk-ins welcome as space allows. Optional donations are appreciated.
With themes of transformation, healing, and tipping points, the Manzanita Writers Series welcomes award-winning author Justin Hocking to read from his latest work, A Field Guide to the Subterranean, and open to a conversation with Q&A from the audience.
Books will be available for sale and author signing at the event through Cloud & Leaf Bookstore.
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.
Praise for A Field Guide:
"A Field Guide to the Subterranean digs deeply down into the earth with powerful questions about who we are and what we've made with our time on the planet. Justin Hocking has created a profound geological journey of the soul, unearthing wisdom about masculinity, the colonization of land and people, and the possibility that we might recover our own hearts if we are willing to be in intimate relationship to the non-human world. A geo love song."
—Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Chronology of Water: A Memoir and Reading The Waves: A Memoir
"This book is a marvel of excavation into the stories we tell about land and self. I devoured it in a day, and emerged seeing the world with both more glitter and more shadow, Hocking’s luminous, lyrical voice echoing in my ear. Reading A Field Guide to the Subterranean somehow feels both like going on a round-the-world adventure and curling up on the couch to converse with an old friend."
—Erica Berry, author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear
“Justin Hocking is a wizard who crafts his stories with equal measures of passion, poetry, and erudition. His writing voice makes you want to follow him to the end of the Earth, or into its deepest caverns, so that he can show you all the beautiful and amazing things to be found there.”
—Hector Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark: The Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free
About the Author:
Justin Hocking is the author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir, which won the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. He also received 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. Along with an MFA in Creative Writing, he holds a BA in Psychology and a Foundations Training Certificate from the Vancouver School for Narrative Therapy. He currently teaches in the MFA and BFA Program in Creative Writing at Portland State University, and his most recent memoir, A Field Guide to the Subterranean, is a finalist for the 2026 Oregon Book Award.
For more information about Justin, please visit his website.
