pub date: March 14, 2023
5.5 x 8.5 · 240 pages
$19.95 US · $27 CAN
ISBN soft: 978-1-7367558-3-9
ISBN ebook: 978-1-7367558-4-6
DISTRIBUTION: 1) Ingram Content Group
or 2) source offset-printed copies
made by Friesens directly
from Porphyry Press
In the Media
Adventure Journal, issue 29
New York Journal of Books review by Sean Prentiss
Humans Outside podcast, 4-27-2023
Big Cabbage Radio interview, 4-13-2023 (11:15)
Los Angeles Times, Rosanna Xia, 4-13-2023
Anchorage Daily News, review by Nancy Lord, 4-2-2023
KDLL, Soldotna launch event coverage, 3-31-2023
Peninsula Clarion, 3-30-2023
KDLL, radio story, 12-16-2022
KDLL, Kenai Conversation w/ Sabine Poux, 2-17-2022
John Messick
Compass Lines
Journeys Toward Home
From Antarctica to the Arctic, the Florida swamps to a Cambodia tattoo parlor, a Middle East bicycle route to a Yukon River canoe trip, Compass Lines: Journeys Toward Home brings readers on adventures that traverse latitudes and continents in pursuit of that most elusive place: home.
This powerful book from award-winning Porphyry Press tracks debut Alaska author John Messick on the winding, deeply felt route from childhood to fatherhood, reminding us that efforts to connect with ourselves depend on a capacity to connect with others.
These essays ask us to think about our encounters with cultures not our own through acts of witness—the imprint of immigration, the foreshadowing of war, the complexities of masculinity. Here, broken vehicles mark porous boundaries between built and natural worlds. A job fighting wildfire near a ghost town reveals the dangers of a life spent wandering. Beyonce videos and polar bear jokes remind Messick of his tourist status, and that it is difficult, maybe impossible, to live ethically in places to which we have no birthright.
Even after settling in Alaska, Messick finds the same colonial legacies taking a toll on land and people. Slowly, through deep and difficult interactions with the natural world, Messick realizes that sustainable existence depends on community and shared values. Neither travel nor homecoming are about conquering obstacles, but about applying attention and learning to listen.
APPEARANCES
To book John, contact us or him
Past:
Sept. 7-10, 2023 · Montana Books Festival, Missoula
October 6, 2023 · Homer Public Library reading, Alaska Book Week
5-12-23 · author dinner reading, The Goods + Sustainable Grocery, Soldotna
4-15-23 · In-store signing at Title Wave Books, Anchorage
Sat, 4-15-2023 · Reading at 203 Kombucha with Fireside Books, Palmer
Sat, 4-15-2023 · A Literary Amble in a Garden Waking Up, Alaska Botanical Garden
Fri, 4-14-2023 · Launch Party, reading, signing. Writer’s Block, Anchorage
Thur, 3-30-2023 · Launch party, Kenai Peninsula College Showcase, Soldotna
Tues, 3-16-23 · Official pub date
Wed, 3-15-23 · Village Books launch reading, Bellingham, WA
Thur, 3-09-23 · signing · Terrain.org booth 410, AWP, Seattle
Wed, 3-08-23 · Rabbit Box Theater prelaunch party, Seattle
Sat, 3-11-23 · signing · Porphyry Press Booth 1307, AWP, Seattle
Sat, 3-11-23 · panel · Summit, Conv. Cntr Lvl 3, AWP
what people are saying
“Messick writes about the wilds of the world—from his first cabin in Fairbanks to traveling in the Everglades, South Korea, Syria, then back to Alaska—but all with an eye for the search for self-understanding, if not the quest for why we live in the first place. This is a writer who can summon up a caribou hunt, a fight against a forest fire, or the trapping of a lynx, with vivid detail and moral complexity.
“An authentic, compassionate, and most of all honest voice about the real last frontier.”
LEIGH NEWMAN, author of Nobody Gets Out Alive
“John Messick comes from the ruggedly blessed landscape of wildly talented Alaskan writers. True aim, straight vision, and beautiful. Enthusiastic thumbs-up. Get it now.”
LUIS ALBERTO URREA, author of Good Night, Irene; The House of Broken Angels; The Devil’s Highway; The Hummingbird’s Daughter and more
“The author explores that shimmering frontier between the exotic and the mundane, and in Compass Lines he tells his story wonderfully well. Messick's voice drew me in—it is wry, warm, and wise. To go or to stay? Messick reveals that the question is the thing, not mutable answers. I really enjoyed this book.”
SARA WHEELER, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, The Magnetic North, and Travels in a Thin Country
“Compass Lines is a morally engaged journey into the wild places of the world and the wild places of the heart. I enjoyed exploring, alongside John Messick, all the vividly-described places in this book: the borderlands, the Northwoods, the Florida glades, the fire lines of the far west, neutrino-rich Antarctica. And I was grateful for how seriously he takes his responsibilities as a parent, a writer, and a citizen of the earth.”
DAN KOIS, author of Vintage Contemporaries and How To Be A Family
“In Compass Lines, from story to story, John Messick's writing takes you somewhere more interesting and improbable and profound than the last. Messick captures in exquisite detail how exploring some of the last wild places on the planet helped him discover himself. Compass Lines is at once a wild globe-trotting adventure, love story, and a beautifully introspective journey revealing the importance of our human connection with nature—all tied together with heart-strings and a good old fashioned Alaska-style blue tarp and some duct tape. The masterful storytelling and sage-like wisdom in Compass Lines makes for one helluva compelling read. Easily one of my favorite collections in years.”
DON REARDEN, author of The Raven’s Gift
“Essayist John Messick's indelible evocations across the globe before home, in a luminously drawn Alaska, is realized. Messick is the kind of person who vacations in Mongolia—it's true!—but nothing smacks of escapism in this moving collection; here, venturing out affords the narrator an opportunity to examine, with a rueful self-scrutiny, his inner life, rituals worth preserving, and the nature of love and companionship, to name just a few. This memorable journey brims with an earned wisdom that often borders on befuddlement, which, after all, may be its own form of wisdom."
CHRIS DOMBROWSKI, author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water and Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish, plus three acclaimed poetry collections
“Compass Lines introduces the work of an important new voice in Alaska literature. In this mix of memoir, travel, and nature writing, Messick eschews the bravado of the adventurer tale, and instead invites us into the introspective root of his own restlessness, ultimately finding the home and connection he seeks in Alaska. Messick’s stories are beautifully told—whether relating his travels in Damascus and Antarctica, canoeing the swamps of Florida, or working on fire crews throughout the Southwest and Alaska, Messick is a skilled storyteller. But it’s his self-reflection and humility that gives this book such depth and wisdom. A pleasure to read!”
DARYL FARMER, author of Where We Land and Bicycling Beyond the Divide
“My wife and I read Compass Lines aloud and savored it daily: the outrageous adventures, the deep honesty, the light touches of humor and so much more. It made us laugh and cry and stare at each other in wonder. Mostly though, it enriched us and inspired meaningful conversation, as the best books often do. At one point John Messick reflects on ‘how a place that seemed so close to the far edge of the world could make me feel so centered.’ Maybe because some lines are circles, and the journey never ends.”
KIM HEACOX, author of The Only Kayak and Rhythm of the Wild
“What’s different about John Messick’s first book — essentially a memoir in essays — is the author’s deep introspection and the exceptional quality of his writing … Messick’s authenticity, honesty and self-reflection draw his route across time and space to find his place in the world. We might all learn from his beautifully told journey something about our own.”
NANCY LORD, author of Fishcamp and Rock, Water, Wild, for Anchorage Daily News
“Compass Lines is a stunning travelogue and memoir about culture, travel, employment, searching for life’s meaning, and, especially, searching for home and family.”
SEAN PRENTISS, author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave and Crosscut: Poems, a memoir-in-poems
about the author
John Messick is a writer, teacher, husband, and father. His work has appeared in news outlets and literary journals, including Rock & Sling, Tampa Review, Nowhere Magazine, The Miami Herald, Anchorage Daily News, and more. John earned his MFA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been awarded the 2013 AWP Intro Journals Prize in nonfiction and a 2022 Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award. He teaches composition at Kenai Peninsula College in Soldotna, Alaska, where he lives with his family. Compass Lines is his first book.
