The new voice of a generous, inventive, and lyrical intelligence.

Forgive Us Our Happiness

Literature & Fiction

Forhan, Chris

Poetry

Middlebury College

The new voice of a generous, inventive, and lyrical intelligence.

Forgive Us Our Happiness (Middlebury/Bread Loaf Book.)

Poetry. Winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize selected by Phillis Levin, BLACK LEAPT IN is a collection of poems about Forhan's childhood in Seattle and his father, who committed suicide in 1973. In it he writes of family vacations, of secretly observing his father watching TV late into the night, of how his father "conceived of us, dealt us like cards to our mother" and of how his perceptions changed when his father died. "In this stunning new book, BLACK LEAPT IN, Chris Forhan makes narrative probe and sing the haunted, haunting landscapes of childhood and adolescence. Forhan unfolds his inventory of losses and joys with an unerring ear and an eloquence bordering on the visionary"--Gregory Orr.

Black Leapt In

Barrow Street Press

A Library Journal Best Memoir of 2016 An award-winning poet offers a multi-generational portrait of an American family—weaving together the lives of his ancestors, his parents, and his own coming of age in the 60s and 70s in the wake of his father’s suicide, in this superbly written, “fiercely honest” (Nick Flynn) memoir. The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn’t come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but not mentioned. And on a cold night in 1973, just before Christmas, Forhan’s father killed himself in the carport. Forty years later, Forhan “bravely considers the way he is and is not his father’s son” (Larry Watson), digging into his family’s past and finding within each generation the same abandonment, loss, and silence in which he was raised. Like Ian Frazier in Family or Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes, Forhan shows his family members as both a part and a product of their time. My Father Before Me is a family history, an investigation into a death, and a stirring portrait of growing up in an Irish Catholic childhood, all set against a backdrop of America from the Great Depression to the Ramones. Marrying the literary scope of memoirists Geoffrey Wolff and J.R. Moehringer with the intensity of family novels like The Corrections and We Are Not Ourselves, My Father Before Me is the kind of epic, immersive memoir that comes along once in a decade.

My Father Before Me: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Scribner

An award-winning poet’s “beautifully written” (The Seattle Times) portrait of an American family and his own coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of his father’s suicide. This memoir “belongs on the special shelves we keep for the books we cannot quite forget” (George Hodgman). The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of secrets. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn’t come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but unspoken. And on a cold night just before Christmas 1973, long after dinner, the rest of the family asleep, Forhan’s father killed himself in the carport. Forty years later, Forhan “excavates both his lost father and a lost era in American history” (Bookpage). At the heart of this “fiercely honest” (Nick Flynn) investigation is Forhan’s father, a man whose crisp suits and gelled hair belied a darkness he could not control, a man whose striking dichotomy embodied the ethos of an era. Weaving together the lives of his ancestors, his parents, and his own coming of age in the 60s and 70s, Forhan paints an “achingly beautiful” (Buffalo News) portrait of a family “in the tradition of Geoffrey Wolff” (Booklist). “Poignant…affecting…Forhan describes his family’s healing and acceptance with warmth, humor, and an admirable lack of bitterness” (Kirkus Reviews). A family history, an investigation into a death, and a stirring portrait of an Irish Catholic childhood, all set against a backdrop of America from the Great Depression to the Ramones, My Father Before Me is “an exquisite example of the power of honesty” (Jeannette Walls), “a wonderfully engrossing book…essential for all parents and children, that is, all people” (Library Journal, starred review).

"Over and over again, these poems shape the tensions that arise from Stevens' 'ever restless mind' and the world around us . . . Only the human speaker asks 'what is one to do' on a perfectly beautiful night when a fern 'rooted at the road's edge/casts the shadow of an infant's ribs.' 'No Comment,' the title of this collection's first poem, is Forhan's wonderfully wry answer . . . Thankfully, Chris Forhan cannot hold his tongue, and, in the poems that follow-often lit by a playful sense of humor and a voice that is truly engaging-he creates a landscape that is both intensely physical and replete with the age-old questions." -- From the Foreword

The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize)

Northeastern University Press

Similar to how songs become familiar and welcoming earworms, these essays will imprint themselves on readers' minds.\nA Mind Full of Music contemplates and celebrates the mysterious, powerful, dynamic relationship between ourselves and the songs we love: the way in which songs work upon our minds and in which our minds, because of the inevitable creative force of our imaginations and memories, work upon them. The book does not propose or develop a unified argument, nor does it tell, chronologically, the story of the author’s life of listening. Instead, in recognition of the varied, fluid, and ultimately mysterious ways in which our minds respond to songs, it is structured associatively, with one topic inspiring thoughts of another; the book begins with a song drifting into the author’s mind, and it ends with that mind still in the midst of listening, waiting for a beat that will never come.

A Mind Full of Music: Essays on Imagination and Popular Song

Essays & Correspondence

Overcup Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Forhan, Chris. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Forhan, Chris

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Forhan, Chris. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Forgive Us Our Happiness

Forgive Us Our Happiness (Middlebury/Bread Loaf Book.)

Black Leapt In

My Father Before Me: A Memoir

My Father Before Me: A Memoir

The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize)

A Mind Full of Music: Essays on Imagination and Popular Song