Glenwood Springs author visits The Bookworm of Edwards to talk about new memoir
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The rise in popularity of shadow work and trauma healing, concurrent with the urgent national conversations about public land usage and exploitation, means that there is no better time for Justin Hocking’s newest book to arrive.
Hear from Hocking about his new memoir, “A Field Guide to the Subterranean,” a radically inventive excavation of one man’s life and relationship to the earth. It charts the author’s lifelong process of unearthing the past and reclaiming his own identity and connection to the natural world. There will be Q&A, a book signing and light refreshments.
Hocking grew up in Glenwood Springs which offered him a unique perspective on what happens underneath the Earth’s surface. “Subterranean spaces have always fascinated me,” Hocking reflected. “So many wonders exist beneath the surface around Glenwood Springs – vapor caves, mineral springs, mining operations, coal seams that have been burning continuously for a hundred years. It was around 2014 – after finishing my first memoir, ‘The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld’ – that I began exploring metaphorical connections between the literal underground and the hidden pattern of abuse that plagued my childhood in Glenwood.”
Similar connections between humans and nature have been explored by Hocking and other authors as part of the trauma healing process. “Healing from trauma is a complicated and lifelong process,” Hocking said. “As I learned from the late great author and naturalist Barry Lopez, an important stage in the process involves turning our attention and empathy outward, toward vulnerable landscapes, animals and people that might benefit from our care.”
Connections are also important in ecological and poetic work, where Hocking draws much of his writing influence. “The discipline of ecology reveals the interconnections between everything,” Hocking said. “As a writer, I tend to approach the memoir form with the mindset of an ecologist or a poet, with the aim of taking the world apart and collaging it back together. When writing about emotionally charged personal material, I also think it’s crucial that we provide readers with a multiplicity of expansive narrative threads, where they can find some sanctuary and escape, and make ample space for wonder, sensory delights, light sources, and interconnectedness.”
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Hocking creates expansive narrative threads by weaving together many different topics that create a well-rounded narrative that he hopes will enable readers to examine their deep selves. “‘A Field Guide to the Subterranean’ maps my lifelong process of negotiating and attempting to move beyond a version of masculinity rooted in exploitation, extraction, and domination – and that I believe is partly responsible for the rise of neo-fascism,” Hocking reflected. “That said, I hope that my process of charting my own foibles and mistakes might be useful for readers of any gender expression while they navigate some of our current cultural and political predicaments. My hope is that readers will come away with new insights and questions about the ground beneath their feet and their deepest sense of self.”
