August 30, 2023, 10:30am
Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, Greg Wrenn’s memoir, Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis forthcoming from Regalo Press. Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher:
Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis is a deeply researched account of Greg turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants to heal from complex PTSD—a disorder of trust, which makes the very act of bonding with someone else panic-inducing. From the tide pools in Florida where he grew up, to Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago and the Amazon rainforest, Greg takes his readers on a journey across the globe. In his search for healing from personal and ecological trauma, he dives into both the ocean and the psyche—and finds they have a lot in common.
Mothership is one man’s audacious quest to heal using nature when talk therapy and pharmaceuticals did little to help. Written with prophetic urgency, Mothership ultimately asks if doses of nature will be enough to save us before it’s too late—and what well-being means in a fracturing society on a dying planet.
And here’s the cover, photographed by Wrenn:
Wrenn told Lit Hub, “The cover photo is of a charismatic barrel sponge I saw while snorkeling in Raja Ampat, a group of Indonesian islands with some of the last pristine coral reefs on earth—I went there to get sane again. In Aljui Bay, the pink sponge started me in the shallows, and I patted it with my gloved hand and made a wish. In two feet of water, it conveyed so much: transcendental openness, the dragalicious largesse and generosity of Mother Earth Herself, and the benevolence of a mothership. I can’t imagine a more fitting ambassador for my memoir about turning to endangered coral reefs and ayahuasca to recover from C-PTSD than this barrel sponge. In my search for healing from personal and ecological trauma, I dove into the ocean and the psyche and found they have a lot in common—and I awakened to the need for us to heal the planet as well. All aboard!”
Mothership will be available from Regalo Press in March 2024.