Chris Hoke | Francis Murphy | Nicholas Webber
scroll down
A collective
January to
Covid journal written
December, 2020
over twelve months
Upland, California  |   Brooklyn, New York  |  Mt. Vernon, Washington
In January, three childhood friends—now middle-aged men scattered across the country—commit to writing letters in a shared Google Doc.
All the while 2020 unfolds around them.
The result is an intimate drama, a window into masculinity at its most vulnerable, the most eventful year of their lives.
Letters released on the same day they were written in 2020.
Authors
CHRIS HOKE
Chris Hoke is a gang pastor and prison re-entry organizer in northwest Washington State. He's the creator of One Parish One Prisoner, executive director of Underground Ministries, and author of WANTED (HarperOne 2015).
Francis Murphy
Francis Murphy is Associate Professor of English at Santiago Canyon College in Orange, CA. A former Claremont National Scholar, he's published several essays on Modernism and the Novel. His own novel, TETHERBALL CHIMES, tells the story of eleven childhood friends reaching—and together resisting—middle-age.
Nicholas Webber
Nicholas Webber is an actor and musician, best known for his work on Netflix's ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK and his extensive body of on-camera commercials. His band, the roots-rock outfit NICKCASEY performed regularly in New York from 2005 to 2020.
A Year Like No Other
Praise for the future forest
A twisty and interesting semi-fictional mise-en-abyme that makes a snapshot of COVID quarantine mid-life self-reckoning. Amazing.
JONATHAN LETHEM
from The New Yorker
What happened to your friends? Do you even know them any more? Or are they just a memory of something you lost, when once they were what made you whole? What if you had kept those friendships vital, kept them in that same energizing and creative state that helped shape you years before? THE FUTURE FOREST is a guidebook to evergreen friendship. Three voices winding, intertwining, joking, supporting, butting in, fading out and rising up together. It's a true example of that most poignant expression of male fidelity: all for one and one for all.
GEORGE PENDLE
from The Los Angeles Times
Baseball, fatherhood, depression, urethras, these letters touch all the bases. The intimacy of letter writing with hilarious real-time color commentary! These conversations beat the shift of the pandemic, striking through memories with honesty and raw emotion to discover the meaningful, deep roots of friendship.
Aaron Guest
from McSweeney's
These three millennials transcend the stereotypes of their gender and generation to discuss friendship, fatherhood, death, and baseball in a way that's funny, insightful, revealing, and never toxic or entitled. By listening, writing, and responding, they're able to maintain their identities and friendship, even during an unprecedented upheaval in everything we take for granted. The letters themselves come complete with clickable commentary that adds depth, comedy, and poignancy to this collaborative journal of a year in lockdown."
Roberta Tragarz
from Pasadena Bookies
© The Future Forest. All rights reserved.