Allison Coffelt – Maps Are Lines We Draw

Thursday, May 31, 7pm
Left Bank Books

Left Bank Books welcomes Columbia, MO author Allison Coffelt, who will sign and discuss her new book, Maps are Lines We Draw: A Road Trip through Haiti, with author & Maryville University professor J. Bowers!

After a decade of dreaming, Allison Coffelt arrived in Haiti, ready—she thought—"to learn how much she didn’t know" about the Caribbean nation. She embarked on a life-changing journey that would weave Haiti’s proud, tumultuous history and present reality into her life forever. Maps Are Lines We Draw explores the culture and natural beauty of the island as well as its discomfiting realities: the threat well-intentioned aid organizations can present to the local economy; the privilege that determines who gets to travel between a "here" and a distant "there" which is foreign and other; and the challenge of doing short-term good without creating long-lasting harm.

“Reflections that are steeped in humility like Ms. Coffelt’s are rare and should be required reading for people pursuing short-term work in countries like Haiti.”
—Joia Mukherjee

This event is free and open to the public, but proof of purchase of Maps are Lines We Draw from Left Bank Books will be required to enter the signing line. 

J. Bowers lives in St. Louis, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Maryville University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her fiction has appeared in The Portland Review, StoryQuarterly, The Indiana Review, and other journals, in addition to being anthologized by Ashland Creek Press, Zoomorphic Press, and Sundress Publications. She was also the winner of The Laurel Review‘s 2014 Midwest Short Fiction Prize and the 2016 Winter Anthology Prize. In her free time, she thinks about the hungry ghosts of silent Hollywood while riding her little yellow pony through the woods.

Parking: Lot one block north; street parking (meters free after 7pm). For directions and public transportation information, click here.