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Sebastian Matthews is the author of a memoir, In My Father’s Footsteps, and two books of poetry, We Generous and Miracle Day. His hybrid collection of poetry and prose, Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision, won the Independent Publisher Book Awards' silver medal. Matthews is also the author of The Life & Times of American Crow, a “collage novel in eleven chapbooks.” His work has appeared in or on, among other places, the Atlantic, Blackbird, the Common, Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, the Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Writer’s Almanac. Matthews lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Learn more at sebastianmatthews.com.
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 World 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 Feature in Without Books with author interview.
