Compass Lines

In essays that traverse latitudes and continents, John Messick's Compass Lines explores the paths we take toward belonging. Here, broken vehicles mark the porous boundaries between built and natural worlds. Deserted backpacks trace immigration routes along the US-Mexico border. A job fighting wildfire near a ghost town reveals the dangers of a life spent wandering. Slowly, as Messick learns the rhythms of seasons-through wing prints on snow, cupboard shelves stocked for winter, and quiet moments before the birth of his son-he discovers that a connection with the places we inhabit requires both movement and stillness.

From Antarctica to the Arctic, a Cambodia tattoo parlor to the Florida swamps, and from childhood to fatherhood, this deeply felt debut invites readers on a search for the most elusive landscape of all-home.

John Messick is a writer, teacher, husband, and father. His work has appeared in news outlets and literary journals, including Rock & Sling, Tampa Review, Nowhere Magazine, The Miami Herald, Anchorage Daily News, and more. John earned his MFA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been awarded the 2013 AWP Intro Journals Prize in nonfiction and a 2022 Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award. He teaches composition at Kenai Peninsula College in Soldotna, Alaska, where he lives with his family. Compass Lines is his first book.