In the literary landscape, few writers navigate the intricate intersections of ontology, diaspora, and acute personal trauma quite like Matthew Salesses. As a celebrated essayist, novelist, and professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech, Salesses has continually pushed the boundaries of traditional narrative structures. His national bestseller, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (Catapult, 2021), fundamentally disrupted standard Western creative writing pedagogy. Meanwhile, his PEN/Faulkner-shortlisted novel Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear (Little A, 2020) demonstrated a rare dexterity in probing the psychological depths of identity loss and societal alienation.
Now, Salesses is preparing to release his most vulnerable and philosophically demanding work to date: a forthcoming memoir titled To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time (Little, Brown and Company, set for release on December 1, 2026). The book chronicles the devastating loss of his wife, Cathreen, who succumbed to stage-four stomach cancer. Through an unflinching examination of grief, adoption, and racial melancholy, Salesses explores what it means to preserve an enduring love long after the physical presence of a partner has vanished.
In an extensive and deeply reflective interview conducted by fellow author and playwright Cherry Lou Sy, Salesses unpacks the complex architecture of his new memoir. The conversation traverses vast philosophical terrains, examining the lingering echoes of early adoption, the concept of the ontological "double," the ethics of rendering real people onto the page, and the perpetual, untamable nature of human mourning.
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Detailed Chronology
The genesis of To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time is inextricably linked to a harrowing personal timeline that spans multiple continents, institutional spaces, and psychological fractures. Adopted from Korea as a toddler, Salesses spent decades navigating the unique conceptual spaces of the Asian diaspora. However, his relationship with his late wife, Cathreen—whom he describes as making him "Korean Korean"—anchored his understanding of cultural identity and personal security.
When Cathreen was diagnosed with stage-four stomach cancer, the foundation of Salesses’s reality began to shift. Her physical decline paralleled a profound psychological collapse for the author, culminating in a period of psychiatric hospitalization. Salesses notes that writing the memoir required anchoring himself in this specific, disorienting temporal space.
Initially, the book’s construction proved elusive. Salesses gathered years of previously published essays, breaking them down into hundreds of discrete fragments using digital sorting tools like Scrivener. He printed and categorized these fragments by subject matter and chronology, attempting to assemble them into a cohesive narrative. Yet, the project lacked an internal clock—a distinct sense of time.
The turning point arrived during his time in the psychiatric ward. Taking observational notes in a small notebook, Salesses realized upon his release that this institutional experience was not a departure from the book, but rather its emotional and structural foundation. Once the memoir was anchored in this raw moment of psychological crisis, the disparate essays and historical fragments fell into alignment. The resulting chronology moves fluidly between early childhood trauma, the suffocating weight of systemic racism, the acute trauma of caregiving, and the enduring, nonlinear aftermath of profound loss.
Supporting Context & Metrics
To fully grasp the magnitude of To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time, one must examine the theoretical frameworks that Salesses employs throughout the text. Central to the memoir is the Freudian concept of melancholy—specifically, "racial melancholy"—which Salesses extends and recontextualizes. While standard grief involves shifting desire away from a lost object toward new attachments, melancholy entails holding onto that desire indefinitely. For marginalized communities, racial melancholy manifests as an impossible longing for full inclusion within a society that systematically excludes them. Salesses notes that finding community among other Asian Americans provides a vital mechanism for coexisting with racism without falling into total debility.
Following Cathreen’s death, Salesses applied this philosophy to his personal grief, resisting societal pressures to "move on" after a designated number of weeks or months. "I didn’t think I could do that, and I didn’t know that I want to do that," Salesses explains. "I wanted to hold onto my love for her."
This refusal to sanitize memory extends to his portrayal of Cathreen herself. Rather than crafting a hagiography—a pristine, idealized portrait that elevates the deceased to untouchable perfection—Salesses intentionally leaves in the fractures, arguments, and human complications of their relationship. By confronting difficult moments, including past relational dynamics and the psychological echoes of childhood abuse, Salesses defends a more honest, sustainable form of remembrance. Keeping a loved one trapped in an idealized, glass-case perfection, he suggests, denies them their full humanity and impedes genuine emotional evolution.
Official Statements & Key Insights
During their dialogue, Cherry Lou Sy and Matthew Salesses explored several profound questions regarding identity, pedagogy, and the ethics of memoir writing.
Addressing the phenomenon of the "double" and the ghosts of unlived lives—a theme heavily influenced by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips—Salesses reflected on how early adoption shapes one’s perception of alternate realities:
"Maybe because I was adopted, because I had spent time in the life I was born into and then was thrust into another, I felt like the ghosts of my other lives were very nearby. Sometimes as a kid… if I could just step through the wall, I could be in that other life. After Cathreen died, I felt a very similar feeling, like time was that wall and the life I wanted was so close."
Salesses also addressed the profound vulnerability required to teach creative writing while continuously processing complex grief. Having secured his first tenure-track position in 2017, just one year prior to Cathreen’s passing in 2018, his academic career and his mourning process evolved simultaneously. Teaching from a place of ongoing self-discovery, he admits, exacts a heavy emotional toll:
"It becomes harder and harder for me, every year, to get out of the room… I have to go into class with a kind of mindset that I’m in the process of learning who I am in life, in order to feel like I can be part of a process of teaching that isn’t just the old top-down model."
Furthermore, Salesses reflected on the unique ontological burden of writing a memoir compared to fiction. While fictional characters and standalone craft books allow an author to "get out of the room" once the manuscript is completed, a memoir offers no such boundary. "My life is the memoir," he notes, acknowledging the persistent exposure that comes with laying one’s intimate history bare before the public and family members who have yet to read the text.
Future Outlook
Even as he prepares for the monumental release of To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time in December 2026, Salesses is already looking ahead to ambitious new creative horizons. Rejecting the notion that individual consumers bear sole responsibility for global climate degradation through personal habits like recycling, his next literary project is a climate fiction novel centered on an Asian American revenge cult. Drawing inspiration from the satisfying narrative structures of Korean revenge dramas—such as Itaewon Class—Salesses aims to explore systemic accountability, repositioning revenge not merely as a destructive impulse, but as humanity’s oldest, potentially reparative system of justice.
Through his forthcoming memoir and upcoming fiction, Salesses continues to redefine the parameters of contemporary American literature. By refusing simple resolutions, embracing the mysteries of the self, and interrogating the enduring architectures of grief, he offers readers a masterclass in what it means to remain fiercely, resiliently alive.
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