Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State

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Product Details
Price
$17.95  $16.69
Publisher
Red Hen Press
Publish Date
Pages
152
Dimensions
4.8 X 7.9 X 0.5 inches | 0.35 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781597094368

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About the Author

Sebastian Matthews is the author of the memoir-in-essays Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State and the hybrid collection Beginner's Guide to a Head-on Collision. His other publications include two books of poems, the memoir In My Father's Footsteps, the collage novel The Life and Times of American Crow, and a collaboration with photographer Charter Weeks entitled Travelogue. He works as a writing coach and leads workshops for the Great Smokies Writing Program in Asheville, NC.

Reviews

"The short essays in Sebastian Matthews's new book Beyond Repair: Encounters in a Fractured World document with extraordinary candor his encounters, for good and ill, with people from all walks of life in the wake of a terrible car accident that nearly cost him his life. 'Recovery is less about return, or repair, ' he writes, 'than it is about re-creation.' And what he re-creates, step by painful step, is the story of a man who is capable of bearing witness not only to the vagaries of his own fractured experience, but to the best and worst of what he finds in this fractured world. This is a book to learn from and live by--a praise song to the imagination and its healing ways." --Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood

"Beyond Repair: Encounters in a Fractured State is a portrait of community in traumatized times. Sebastian Matthews documents dislocation, both psychic and physical, in these tightly crafted nonfiction vignettes. Whether the speaker is on the sidelines at his child's soccer game, seeking help from the credit card fraud hotline, or in the elevator with a confused Alzheimer's sufferer, Matthews enacts the difficulty and necessity of compassion. With wryly insightful observations, Beyond Repair brings us closer with every sentence to the deep repairing we need." --Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling


"A deftly crafted, presented in the format of a series of essays, impressively detailed, and inherently engaging memoir, "Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State" is a life story for our times and unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Contemporary American Biography collections. "--Midwest Book Review


"Beautifully written and timely, Beyond Repair weaves together personal and national traumas in a way that resonated particularly with me as a writer in North Carolina wrestling with race in the Trump era."--David Graham, The Atlantic