The Jackson Forelle Archives Open at Tidemarsh University

Tidemarsh University is excited to announce the opening of the Jackson Forelle Archives, showcasing materials documenting the author’s life, creative process, and legacy.

Although he is not always eager to acknowledge it, Forelle is a two-time alumnus of Tidemarsh, having earned both his undergraduate degree in engineering and his law degree from the school. In 2025, Tidemarsh University Press published Forelle’s debut novel, The Streaker, which proved an unexpected success among both readers and critics. Shortly after its release, it displaced the press’s previous all-time bestseller, a how-to guide on backyard chicken keeping.

The Streaker later went on to win the 2025 Molinos de Viento Book Award, “celebrating the author who charges in boldly, lance ready, and brilliantly misses the point.” The novel chronicles the journey of Rye Smyth, a disillusioned, and likely concussed, philosophy professor who inherits a run-down scallop boat and sets off through the Caribbean. A modern-day Diogenes, Rye is determined to live a simple, dog-like existence as he seeks kindred spirits in the tropics. He is also intent on writing an all-important book he is certain will change the world.

The 6500 square foot Forelle Archives will house early revisions and drafts of his first novel. Although the completed project came in at a little over three hundred pages, the first version consisted of a compilation of incomprehensible scribblings on the backs of bar napkins, including several that originated from a local gentleman’s club. The university also attempted to obtain plot diagrams and character sketches but, to its disappointment, discovered that no such documents ever existed.

The exhibit also includes a six-foot-high, meticulously stacked three-dimensional pyramid of Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon from Buffalo Trace Distillery, an exact replica of one in Forelle’s writing studio. The author confirmed that he personally consumed every bottle in the original structure during the drafting of The Streaker.

Forelle is currently working on his second novel, The Republic of Mozos, which he anticipates will be complete by the end of the year.

It is not entirely clear why Tidemarsh has devoted such resources to such a new author, but it may reflect the school’s desire to promote alumni projects outside the lethal weapons research sector for which it is best known.

The opening was scheduled for March 1, but ongoing student protests have delayed it by a month.