MOTHERSHIP: A MEMOIR OF WONDER AND CRISIS
“The ecological is personal,” Professor Greg Wrenn likes to tell his nature-writing students at James Madison University. “And the personal is ecological.” But what he’s never told them is how he's secretly lived out those correspondences to heal from childhood abuse at the hands of his mother. 
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Weaving together cutting-edge science and memoir, Mothership is not just a queer coming-of-age story. It’s an evidence-based account of how Greg has turned to endangered coral reefs, rainforests, and psychedelic plants to recover from repeated, prolonged abuse which he couldn’t escape. From the tide pools of his upbringing in Florida to Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Archipelago and the Amazon rainforest, this is one man’s audacious quest to heal using nature when talk therapy and pharmaceuticals did little to help. Along the way, he takes readers underwater to the most pristine reefs on earth. 

Mothership is forthcoming in 2024 from Regalo Press, a new standalone imprint distributed by Simon & Schuster, founded by Big Five-publishing veteran Gretchen Young. On publication, Regalo will make a donation to an environmental charity, and Greg has committed to donating at least 10% of his profits to the Nature Conservancy.
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Mothership speaks to trauma, body shame, addiction, the climate crisis, nature as a mental health resource, and, most controversially, psychedelic therapy. After the 2018 release of Michael Pollan’s New York Times-bestselling How to Change Your Mind, there is an urgent need for trustworthy, non-kooky follow-up books to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of psychedelic therapy--Greg's book will be one of the first. 
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What's more, his memoir will the first extended mainstream literary look at Ayahuasca, the psychedelic tea that Greg drank in the Amazon rainforest. How to Change Your Mind spends a few pages on it, whereas a third of Mothership is devoted to it. The trauma of the pandemic has caused many people to look for mental health treatments that actually work--the laws around psychedelic use are quickly changing, and so are many minds.

Mothership will also be the only mainstream literary account of coral reefs. Greg takes readers underwater to some of the most pristine coral reefs left on earth as pollution and warming ocean temperatures threaten their survival. In Mothership, as he seeks healing from trauma, he dives into both the ocean and the psyche, and find they have a lot in common.

Represented by Wendy Levinson at the Harvey Klinger Literary Agency.

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