
Prairie Lights Books invites you to join Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program alum Matthew Gavin Frank as he reads from his newest book, Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines.
Publisher Penguin Random House describes Submersed as "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."
Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire, praises Submersed as "[A] thrilling study of an obsession—to sink below the surface, to depths both metaphoric and in fact," while Lizz Schumer of People magazine and the “People Picks the Best Nonfiction Books of Summer 2025” says, "If the title alone doesn’t have you jamming the preorder button, the titillating story of what drives people to sink to the depths in amateur submarines will.”
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.