Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Award-winning writer ZZ Packer shows an impressive range and command of language in her debut story collection. She surprises and dazzles us with unexpected turns and indelible images as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decide where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking performance -- fresh, versatile, and captivating. It introduces an arresting and unforgettable new voice. ZZ Packer's stories have appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories 2000. A graduate of Yale, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Writing Seminar at Johns Hopkins University, Packer is currently a Jones lecturer at Stanford University. Reader Shirley Jordan has appeared in numerous stage and television productions on both coasts, and also works as an acting and dialogue coach.