It’s early 2020 in America. In the days between Trump’s first impeachment and the start of the Major League Baseball season, three childhood friends, now married men in distant corners of the country—Wuck, an actor in Brooklyn; Hoke, a prison chaplain in the farmlands north of Seattle; Murph, an English professor still living in the Southern California suburb where they grew up—begin writing letters to each other in a shared online document.

Their goal is simply to connect across the growing distances of time and space, to commune beyond the baseball-centric group text they share with their larger crew of high school pals, especially as Wuck prepares to join Hoke and Murph in fatherhood. But then the pandemic shuts down the country, complicating and compressing their lives in unexpected fashion. In shared isolation, their correspondence—their connection—deepens.

What emerges is not only singular in form—a braided epistolary memoir layered with real-time comment threads—but unprecedented in effect: a window into the rich, shared world of lifelong friendship. As these men stumble through exchanges both intimate and uncertain—with topics ranging from Proust to privilege to the pennant—they provide a shining example of masculinity at its most vulnerable. In the end, The Future Forest is a portrait of how difficult it is to make sense of our pasts, of ourselves, or to find our ways forward in isolation.

Join the authors Saturday, October 28th (6:00pm – 9:00pm) for readings from the work as they commemorate the unveiling of a unique immersive installation and seventy original drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Andrew Cisneros (yes, also their childhood friend!). Cisneros’ work is inspired by and will accompany the letters as they’re released all year long at futureforestletters.com.

This free event is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Contact info@futureforestletters.com for more information.