The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #111: Justin Hocking
"My hope is that mapping my own mistakes and foibles might help us navigate our current cultural and political predicaments."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 111th installment, featuring , author most recently of A Field Guide to the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and our Deepest Selves.-Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Justin Hocking is the author of A Field Guide to the Subterranean: A Memoir and The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir, which won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction. He served as the executive director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) from 2006 to 2014 and is a recipient of the Willamette Writers Humanitarian Award for his work in writing, publishing, and literary outreach. He teaches creative writing in the MFA and BFA programs at Portland State University. Find out more at justinhocking.net.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I turn 52 this coming August. I’ve been writing professionally since I was about 25, so I guess I’ve been at it now for nearly three decades? That’s a long time and I honestly do not feel like a seasoned author when I sit down to work—writing a book is unlike riding a bike in that you essentially relearn the process every time you saddle up.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
My latest book is A Field Guide the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and our Deepest Selves—A Memoir; it’s coming out with Counterpoint Press today, June 10, 2025.
What number book is this for you?
This is my second full-length memoir; I’ve also written and published a handful of fiction and poetry chapbooks and tons of zines.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
A Field Guide to the Subterranean contains quite a lot of personal history, so it falls loosely under the label of memoir—though the personal material is collaged together with outside research, lyrical digressions, cultural criticism, environmental writing, etc. So it might be best described as “lyrical memoir” or “memoir-in-essays.” I’m always interested in how deeply we can plumb our own psyches in a memoir—but also how far we can move beyond ourselves, and the degree to which we can push against the boundaries of conventional nonfiction.
I grew up in a part of Colorado where so many things happened beneath the surface—mining exploits, nuclear testing, and geothermal activity that heats one of the world’s largest hot springs pools. At the same time, my home life was plagued by patterns of abuse and virulent masculinity that happened “underground,” so to speak. A Field Guide to the Subterranean charts my lifelong process of unearthing the past and reclaiming my own identity and connection to the natural world.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
I grew up in a part of Colorado where so many things happened beneath the surface—mining exploits, nuclear testing, and geothermal activity that heats one of the world’s largest hot springs pools. At the same time, my home life was plagued by patterns of abuse and virulent masculinity that happened “underground,” so to speak. A Field Guide to the Subterranean charts my lifelong process of unearthing the past and reclaiming my own identity and connection to the natural world.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
As a kid I was surrounded by natural wonders—caverns, quarries, hot springs, vapor caves, and a geological site called “Burning Mountain,” where an underground coal seam has been burning continuously for over a hundred years. In so many ways, it was a magical place to grow up. My best friend Gabriel Liston is a brilliant visual artist; as a kid I spent as much time as I could with him up at his family’s cabin. Feeling that level of freedom and connection to the natural world—and being in contact with Gabriel’s artmaking from a very young age—probably planted the seeds of my own eventual growth into a writer.
At the same time, the legacy of settler colonialism lives on in western Colorado. It’s written on the landscape and the culture and the conspicuously sparse population of Indigenous peoples in the town where I grew up. I think a kind of colonialist, extractive mindset also endures in the way gender is often performed there (and in much of the United States). I lived in close contact with a specific brand of exploitative masculinity; in one case it escalated into a pattern of sexual abuse that lasted for many years. It forced me into a kind of underground labor, so to speak; it ruptured my ability to feel at home in the world.
Then, in my early twenties, I fell under the spell of the poet Robert Bly, whose bestselling book Iron John propagated the gender-essentialist notion that the feminist movement was causing many men of that era to become too “soft.” I subsequently went to great lengths and put myself and others in physical danger to be more of the “real man” I thought I needed to be to escape all the fear and sadness I carried with me from childhood. Another narrative strand in A Field Guide interrogates my regrettable involvement in what we now label as the first-wave “mens’ movement” of the 1990s; my hope is that mapping my own mistakes and foibles might help us navigate our current cultural and political predicaments.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Excavating the most tender layers of my childhood was sometimes more difficult than anticipated. This book took ten years to write; my momentum and mood tanked multiple times during the process. Luckily I had support from dear friends and fellow writers like
and , who helped me remember to make ample room for joy, sensory delight, and various sources of light during the process of unearthing. Carving out space for wonder and awe kept me (and the narrative itself) more buoyant; I also approached the abuse material with significant distance and abstraction in ways that hopefully prevent readers from feeling overwhelmed.My publishing story for this book is another saga. I’m grateful to my wonderful agent Matt McGowan; it took us a couple submission rounds but fortunately it ended up in the very capable hands of Dan Smetanka at Counterpoint Press. Dan has great enthusiasm for his authors and a subtle editorial touch that helped refine the prose in ways I’m thrilled about.
In my early 20s, I fell under the spell of the poet Robert Bly, whose bestselling book Iron John propagated the gender-essentialist notion that the feminist movement was causing many men of that era to become too “soft.” I subsequently went to great lengths and put myself and others in physical danger to be more of the “real man” I thought I needed to be to escape all the fear and sadness I carried with me from childhood. Another narrative strand in A Field Guide interrogates my regrettable involvement in what we now label as the first-wave “mens’ movement” of the 1990s...
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I changed most names and the names of certain organizations to help preserve anonymity. I asked a couple people closest to me for advance reads. My partner Lisa Mae acts as my first and best editor; I made key revisions based on her sage advice. The final section of the book is set mostly in Costa Rica, where we’ve spent a lot of time over the past fifteen years. I wrote about a world-class birding guide and wildlife tracker whom I name Enrique in the memoir; though I changed his name it felt important to seek out his approval before publishing aspects of his own life story.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I dedicated A Field Guide to the Subterranean to a former writing mentor and friend Barry Lopez, author of the National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams. He was a genuinely lovely and brilliant human being and one of the finest, most accomplished writers I had the pleasure of knowing. Before he passed away in 2020 he grew increasingly open about having survived sexual assault as a child, and about the ways he transformed his wounds into deep empathy and care for vulnerable landscapes and peoples—this was a central source of inspiration for crafting my own narrative. Barry showed me the way and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
I also found stylistic inspiration from poetry—especially contemporary authors who cross-pollinate poetry and essays: Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, Steven Church, Maggie Nelson, A.M. O’Malley, and Erica Berry to name a few.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Just stick with it, to paraphrase Doris Lessing. Delivering a book into the world involves about 40% skill and 60% dogged persistence.
What do you love about writing?
It quiets and centers my mind in our otherwise noisy and over-mediated world. It allows me to continuously tail my curiosity and collage my own identity together from multiple artforms and narratives. I also revere writing as one of many creative methods for undermining the global threat of authoritarianism.
What frustrates you about writing?
It takes too long to write and publish a book. To quell my impatience, I generally try to self- publish smaller chunks of my larger ongoing projects as chapbooks or zines. A Field Guide to the Subterranean lived its first incarnation in a much shorter letterpress chapbook called Reclamation: Essays.
What about writing surprises you?
I try to write in a way that allows for constant surprises. It’s good to have a general sense of direction with a project, but overplanning an essay or story can kill its potential for surfacing the unknown.
I could have never guessed, for example, that in the third and final section of A Field Guide to The Subterranean I’d veer off on a long tangent about Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, who, thanks to her husband’s silver mining fortune, was the wealthiest Coloradan of the late 19th century. After the collapse of the silver market, she lived her last thirty years inside a tool shed on the edge of a defunct mineshaft. Her story revealed an unexpected vein for further meditating on gender, extractive capitalism, mental health and resilience.
Excavating the most tender layers of my childhood was sometimes more difficult than anticipated. This book took ten years to write; my momentum and mood tanked multiple times during the process. Luckily I had support from dear friends and fellow writers like Lidia Yuknavitch and Domi Shoemaker, who helped me remember to make ample room for joy, sensory delight, and various sources of light during the process of unearthing.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I’m generally most game in the mornings. Generating brand new material feels exhausting—I can only handle that in short bursts. Handwriting an exceptionally messy, chaotic first draft works for me. After I type it up on the computer and transition into the editing stages, I can spend hours reading and re-reading and slowly puzzling together the narrative pieces and refining each sentence. This last stage is not particularly sexy but it’s when most of the work gets done.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
Along with writing, I’ve been skateboarding avidly since I was 12. I’m still at it, forty years later–wallrides and grinds give me as much joy now as they did at 15. About four years ago I also started playing drums again. Both are pretty humbling activities for a person in their 50s, but they’re a primary source of fun and friendships. It’s maybe a bit of a simplistic metaphor but skateboarding entails endless failures and a lot of falling on hard surfaces. Through skating I’ve learned a combination of playfulness and persistence–or maybe grit is a better word–that I think serves me well in my creative endeavors.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I’m working on a short story entitled “The Curse Tablets” about a pregnant young couple seeking affordable housing and a better life for themselves in ancient Rome. Along the way they unfortunately fall into the orbit of a cunning real estate mogul named Crassus. His character is based on a real-life Roman oligarch who was the richest man of his era; he leveraged his ill-gotten real estate wealth and influence to help bring about the downfall of the Republic. It’s packed with anachronisms—the main character blends vulgar Latin phrases with a valley-girl patois—and generally I’m having a lot of fun with this kind of humorous, allegorical approach to writing about our present moment. “The Curse Tablets” is part of a longer collection of stories that I’m hoping to complete later this year, once I’m wrapping up promotion and touring for A Field Guide the Subterranean.
Wonderful to get such a cross-section of memoir writers! Thanks Sari.
Chasing tangents and connections is such a big part of life. Cool to see how it interweaves with the writing process as well.