I am so excited to finally introduce Ark Two Memoir by J.C. Hallman to our readers.
Sometimes you come across writers you enjoy by stumbling across one of their books. I stumbled across J.C. Hallman’s actual notes, scrawled on flashcards, which he had laid out in a line snaking from the door of his studio and all the way down the hall. Out of context, that sounds like an odd thing to do, but it was Open Studios night at Vermont Studio Center where we were both in residence in September 2018. Given that the visual artists had a lot more to show than we did (“Um… here’s my desk…”), the writers were getting creative.
I love nonfiction that gives readers a peek behind the curtain to what it takes to put a story together, and this piece about a Canadian bomb shelter built out of 42 buried school buses has plenty of it. There is also a pleasant symmetry between Hallman’s personal doomsday unfolding as he spends time with someone who’s prepared for a literal doomsday:
What drew me to Bruce Beach… was that I had begun thinking of my career itself as coming to an end. Even though the world wasn’t ending, and isn’t ending, and won’t ever end in any kind of literal way, what people tend to do with dramatic turmoil in their lives, of the romantic or professional or political sorts, is react as though it’s the end of the world, as though they simply can’t live without this lover, this job, this movement.
…I had convinced myself that without breaking into magazines the world, my world, would end. That’s why my ears pricked when my brother, Peter, mentioned Ark Two.
J.C. Hallman is the author of a book of stories, and six books of nonfiction, including SAY ANARCHA. He is the recipient of fellowships in fiction and nonfiction from the McKnight and Guggenheim Foundations. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.