Rushing to his seat on a plane headed to Hong Kong from Moscow, where he had minutes to spare before his visa expired, Robin Hemley put his U.S. passport on his tray table. This simple act provoked his seatmate, an energetic and disillusioned Ukrainian, to ask: “You patriot?” compelling Hemley to muse on the question for years.
A travel writer drawn to obscure and intriguing places (enclaves, exclaves, and overseas territories among them), he journeyed far afield as he sought to understand what it means to belong to a nation, and what it means to go outside the borders of that nation. Part travelogue, part memoir, part reporting, Robin Hemley’s book "Borderline Citizen" redefines notions of nationhood through an exploration of the arbitrariness of boundaries and what it means to belong.
Robin Hemley is the author of numerous books, including "How to Change History," "Invented Eden," "Reply All: Stories," "A Field Guide for Immersion Writing," "Nola," "Turning Life into Fiction," and "Do-Over!" He has won many awards for his writing, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, as well as residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Fine Arts Work in Provincetown, the MacDowell Colony, and others.
