Megan Harlan, "Mobile Home: A Memoir in Essays" (U Georgia Press, 2020)

Home is the place many of us have spent our days for the last eight months. During the pandemic, our homes have become our workplaces, our classrooms, and our social spaces through apps like Zoom. But no matter what we do in our homes, for many of us, the notion of a home is fixed, tied just as much to a specific place as it is to our identities—both how we understand who we are, and the ways we communicate that self to the world. Whether our country, our region, or our city, when asked where we come from, most of us will respond with a definitive answer: This is the place I call my home.

But for some, the concept of home is anything but stable, or fixed. For author Megan Harlan, a nomadic family lifestyle led her to live in seventeen homes across four continents by the time she was seventeen years old. In Mobile Home: A Memoir in Essays, Harlan recounts her experiences living in some of the world’s most historically rich, remote places, and how these many homes afforded her an appreciation and a keen eye for architecture, anthropology, history, literature, the natural world, and so much more. In this meticulously researched debut collection, Harlan explores questions about how we become ourselves through fascinating stories of the many places she has called home.

Today on New Books in Literature, please welcome Megan Harlan for a conversation about her new book, Mobile Home, available now from the University of Georgia Press (2020).

Zoë Bossiere is a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, where she studies creative nonfiction and teaches writing classes. For more NBN interviews, follow her on Twitter @zoebossiere or head to zoebossiere.com

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