This is a hometown launch and one we feel honored to host. Join Jessica (Reese) Goudeau and Alisha Taylor in conversation about this significant work. Jessica will sign books at the event.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jessica Goudeau is the author of After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, a Christopher Award, and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. She has been a columnist for Catapult and written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Washington Post, among many other places. She produced short documentaries distributed by Teen Vogue and The New Yorker about young women crossing borders. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Texas and teaches Creative Nonfiction at Wilkes University.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR WE WERE ILLEGAL:
“This is not just a book about one family, or one state. At a time when history has become a primary battlefield in the culture wars, We Were Illegal models for us how to engage the darker chapters of our individual and collective stories, and shows us why we must. With unflinching honesty and deep empathy, Jessica Goudeau brings readers to a place of hard-earned hope. Thoroughly engrossing, this book is a gift to a divided nation.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation