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Who: Karen BabineWhat: an evening celebrating her new memoir, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo
Where: Pulpit Rock Brewing events room
When: Tuesday, 5/27 at 7:00pm
Join Karen Babine, author of The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo, and the Dragonfly Books Staff on Tuesday May 27th at 7:00pm in the Pulpit Rock Brewing events room for a reading, Q&A, and signing!
Karen Babine is a two-time Minnesota Book Award-winning author of Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life (2015) and All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer (2019), with her third book, The Allure of Elsewhere, published by Milkweed Editions in May 2025. She founded and edits Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, dedicated to publishing top nonfiction scholarship and pedagogy, and her edited collection of Assay work, Beyond Truth and Fact: Innovations in the Craft of Creative Nonfiction, is set for release in 2027. Holding an MFA in creative nonfiction and a PhD in English, she is a UC Foundation Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where she received the UTAA Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023.
In The Allure of Elsewhere, Karen Babine embarks on a cross-country journey with her Scamp camper and two reluctant cats, Galway and Maeve, traveling from Minnesota to Nova Scotia to explore her French-Acadian roots. As she navigates questions of history, identity, and belonging, she reflects on the stories that shape us—those we inherit, those we create, and the tension between kinship and independence. With warmth, wit, and candid curiosity, Babine captures the freedom of the open road in a memoir that examines the power of storytelling to define who we are and where we’re headed.
This event is part of Dragonfly Books and the Oneota Valley Literary Foundation’s robust author event series, which brings top-notch writers of all genres to Northeast Iowa to lead in conversations about literature and writing. To learn more about this event and other events with Dragonfly Books, visit www.dragonflybooks.com.
If you find that you can't make it to the event but would still like to purchase any books from this author talk, give Dragonfly Books a call at 563-382-4275. Our staff will be glad to reserve a book, have it autographed for you, and shipped out as needed.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Pulpit Rock Brewing Company, 207 College Dr,Decorah, Iowa, United States