Our Nations, Ourselves
World Literature Today|Spring 2020
A Conversation with Robin Hemley
Tiffany Hawk
Our Nations, Ourselves

Robin Hemley, ceaseless traveler—or as he calls it, polygamist of place—is the author of fourteen books, former director of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa, and founder of NonfictioNOW, the world’s leading international conference in nonfiction. We corresponded over email about his latest book, Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood, just out from the University of Nebraska Press. In it, Hemley explores the notions of borders, nationhood, and identity, bringing readers to a number of in-between places, from a Bengali resettlement camp in India, to a preposterously extravagant Chinese mansion smack in the middle of a destitute village, to a painstakingly fabricated indoor rainforest in Nebraska.

Tiffany Hawk: Each of the locations you explore is fascinating in its own right, but I was most struck by how elegantly the various essays play off each other. It felt inevitable that they would come together as a collection. Did you envision a book when you set out to research and write about these subjects?

This story is from the Spring 2020 edition of World Literature Today.

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This story is from the Spring 2020 edition of World Literature Today.

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