# Sequoia Nagamatsu

Sequoia Nagamatsu is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor, and the author of the novel How High We Go in the Dark.

## Personal life

Nagamatsu received a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology in 2004 from Grinnell College and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Southern Illinois University.
Nagamatsu was raised in Oahu and San Francisco and attended Pinewood School, a private high school in Los Altos Hills, where he began his love of creative writing. He currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife, Cole Nagamatsu, their cat, Kalahira, a dog Fenris, and a Sony Aibo robotic dog named Calvino. He has Japanese roots and lived in Niigata City, Japan for about two years prior to attending graduate school.

## Career

Nagamatsu previously taught at the College of Idaho, Southern Illinois University, and the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
Aside from writing, Nagamatsu formerly co-edited Psychopomp Magazine alongside his wife and is an associate professor of English at St. Olaf College, where he teaches first-year writing and creative writing courses. He additionally joined the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program, the Rainier Writers Workshop, which is based at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

## Selected texts
### How High We Go in the Dark (2022)

How High We Go in the Dark, published on January 18, 2022, by William Morrow, is a literary science fiction-fantasy novel. Bloomsbury acquired UK and Commonwealth foreign rights. The novel is told in a series of interlinked stories which take place after a pandemic massively reshapes life on earth, often focusing on grief and its intersection with technology.
Prior to publication, the book was named on "most anticipated" lists from Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, Tatler Asia, Bustle, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Chicago Review of Books, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, She Reads, and Tor.com.
The book received starred reviews from Library Journal and Booklist, who called it "[b]oth epic and deeply intimate," as well as a positive review from Lightspeed. Amy Brady with the Scientific American stated that "this polyphonic novel reflects our human desire to find meaning within tragedy. To feel our innate interconnection with all things, to care for one another—strangers, even—during times of immense loss, to learn how to say goodbye, to make things of beauty, and, most essentially, to inhabit and tend a livable planet for all." The book was also listed by Goodreads Readers as a most anticipated read of 2022.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that "Nagamatsu can clearly write, but this exploration of global trauma makes for particularly bleak reading: the novel offers no resolutions, or even much hope, just snapshots of grief and loss.... Readers willing to speculate about a global crisis not too far off from reality will find plenty to think about in this deeply sad but well-rendered vision of an apocalyptic future."
Kirkus provided a poor review, saying the book was "[a]mbitious, bleak, and not fully realized."
Since publication, the novel has been cited as a New York Times Editors' Choice and has consistently been listed in "best of 2022 thus far" lists in several media outlets including Esquire, Business Insider, Goodreads, and Polygon, among others. The author and cultural critic, Roxane Gay, selected the novel for her Audacious Literati Book Club in March 2022. Gay said of the novel: “How High We Go in the Dark” is ambitious and intricately plotted. It is a beautiful meditation on the way everything in this world—no, in this universe—is intimately connected."
In the summer of 2022, the novel was shortlisted for the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, an award vetted by booksellers from Waterstones bookstores in the United Kingdom. The novel was also shortlisted for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, an award sponsored by the Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust with a cash prize of $25,000, and later named one of two finalists from the shortlist. Later in 2022 and 2023, the novel was included on the shortlist for the reimagined Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, long listed for both the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and listed as a finalist for the Locus Award.

#### Plot

The book's plot focuses on the effects on environmental catastrophe and the sudden release of a novel virus on Planet Earth. The novel virus, which is called the Arctic Plague, reaches San Francisco on July 4, 2031. The plague is so prevalent that funerary cryptocurrency has become the common currency. The funeral industry becomes dominant and eclipses the banking industry. In the 2024s, humanity recovers extraterrestrial technology from a crash, and later, at Area 51, a human-built starship is built and powered by a stable micro black hole. Around 2039, a cure to the Arctic plague is found, and "a nationwide climate campaign to phase out gas vehicles" happens. After 30 years of the Great Transition of 2070, the City of Toyko is an inhabited archipelago. By 2110, funerary towers, which are repurposed skyscrapers to hold and honor the dead, dominate the skyline of major cities. Around 8037, the starship crew starts to settle an exoplanet. The last message from Earth was in 7037 "when humanity constructed a Dyson sphere around the sun, fueling metropolis on Mars, Luna, and Titan".

### Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (2016)

Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, published May 2016 by Black Lawrence Press, is a short story collection.
The collection received positive reviews from Booklist, Buzzfeed, Strange Horizons, The Rumpus, and Green Mountains Review.
It also received the following accolades:
* Foreword Reviews Indie Book of the Year Silver Medal winner: Short Stories (Adult Fiction) (2016)
* Foreword Reviews Indie Book of the Year finalist: Multicultural (Adult Fiction) (2016)
* Entropy Magazine Best Books of 2016

## Publications
### Books

* Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (2016)
* How High We Go in the Dark (2022)

### Selected Short stories

* "Grave Friends," published Fall 2020 in The Iowa Review
* "Elegy Hotel," published Spring 2020 in The Southern Review
* "The Songs of Your Decay," published April 27, 2016 by Day One
* "Where We Go When All We Were is Gone," published May 15, 2015 in Green Mountain Reviews
* "The Return to Monsterland," published in Conjunctions, then reprinted September 3, 2015 in Joyland
* "Headwater LLC," published December 31st 2014 in Lightspeed, then republished July 26, 2016 in The Museum of All Things Awesome and that Go Boom
* "Placentophagy," published November 21, 2014 in Tin House
* "Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Cyber Cafe," published May 1, 2009 in One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories