Patient Body

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.

"The Patient Body is a book of intimate encounters, each short piece like a living film in a dynamic scrapbook, the most honest social media feed you’ll ever read. No doom-scrolling here—only life-scrolling, with a core message: 'You are who you are, and I love you for it. I am who I am, so love me for it . . .' I loved walking through our ever-precarious world with Matthews and this message as my guide, meeting neighbors and strangers, dogs and bears, artists and family members, and his own patient body, back from the brink of death. The personal and the ordinary can save us, friends, this book says—so look around you. It’s a message that buoys."—Dana Levin, author of Now Do You Know Where You Are"Matthews' luminous prose, rooted in place and rich sensory detail, tracks the major and minor impacts of life and the dividing lines the body crosses over to make a map of a nervous system."—Sonya Huber, author of Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook