Nonfiction Writing Program alum Matthew Clark will read from Bjarki, Not Bjarki: On Floorboards, Love, and Irreconcilable Differences, which began as a magazine-style essay about Bjarki Thor Gunnarsson, a climate change denier and conspiracy theorizer who also happens to manufacture the widest, purest, most metaphorical pine boards around. Set mostly in rural Maine, Bjarki, Not Bjarki combines personal narrative, immersive journalism, and environmental rumination, all told in a distinctive essayistic voice.”At the edges of this finely told tale hangs a fog of dark matter (troubles in love, misinformation, guns, insurrection, a jokey racism) while at the center stands a lumber mill in Maine, where men practice a useful craft (as best they can) and befriend one another (ditto). If the fog surrounding them (and us) is ever to lift it will be thanks to voices as attentive, amusing, and generous as that of Matthew Clark. Bjarki, Not Bjarki is the kind of book we need right now.”–Lewis Hyde

Matthew J. C. Clark is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program.  His essays have appeared in True Story, the Antioch Review, the Seneca Review, Ecotone, the Indiana Review, Fourth Genre, Wag’s Revue, and CutBank. He lives and works as a carpenter in Bath, Maine.