Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

This collection of stories by ZZ Packer, a graduate of the illustrious Iowa Writers' Workshop, is at times gritty, satirical, painful, entertaining, hopeful, and humorous. One memorable and unsettling story in this collection follows a troubled African American female student at Yale. In another story, a teenage girl runs away to track down her mother in the big city, but finds herself amongst prostitutes and a shady character named Dezi. This book is for readers who are not looking for light-hearted fiction.