Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines with Matthew Gavin Frank and Anna Clark
7-8pm ET, July 10, 2025
Book Suey
10345 Joseph Campau Ave
Hamtramck, MI 48212
Local Journalist Baddie Anna Clark (The Poisoned City) in conversation with Matthew Gavin Frank about his new book Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amatuer Submarines. Matthew will also read an extended selection from his book! Come hangout with these lyrical and lucid nonfictioneers!
Doors 7pm
Run Time approx 50 mins
FREE
About the Book:
Submersed is a lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen’s murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime.
Submersed begins with an investigation into the beguiling subculture of DIY submersible obsessives: men and women—but mostly men—who are so compelled to sink into the deep sea that they become amateur backyard submarine-builders. Should they succeed in fashioning a craft in their garage or driveway and set sail, they do so at great personal risk—as the 2023 fatal implosion of Stockton Rush’s much more highly funded submarine, Titan, proved to the world.
Weaving together elements of true crime, the strange history of the submarine, the mythology of the deep sea, and the physical and mental side effects of sinking to great depth, Frank attempts to get to the bottom of this niche compulsion to chase the extreme in our planet’s bodies of water and in our own bodies.
About the Author:
MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK is the author of the nonfiction books Flight of the Diamond Smugglers, The Mad Feast, Preparing the Ghost, Pot Farm, and Barolo, as well as the poetry books The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Guernica, The New Republic, Iowa Review, Salon, Conjunctions, The Believer, and the Best Travel Writing and Best Food Writing anthologies. He’s a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.
About the Conversation Partner:
ANNA CLARK is a writer who lives in Detroit. She is a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism with moral force. She is the author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy, which won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Book Journalism. The Poisoned City was named one of the year’s best books by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Public Library, Audible, and others.
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