Allie Coker Shines a Light on Mental Illness in Novella, “The Last Resort”
Podcast: Download (Duration: 37:14 — 34.1MB)
In this episode 231, we visit with Allie Coker, author of “The Last Resort,” a novella told “in voices,” small vignettes of characters residing in a sanitarium who exist mostly in their own minds.
As we shift from each small perspective—patients, caregivers, security—we begin to see the Last Resort Sanitarium come into view more clearly, especially the experience of a young, enigmatic woman Sandy and her alter-ego Lex.
Alan Michael Parker, author of “Cry Uncle” and “Whale Man,” had this to say about the book, “Allie Coker’s searing and searching ‘The Last Resort’ is a polyphonic wonder, a choir of soaring and anguished voices. Everyone’s locked up here: the suicidal patients together with the shift-work caregivers, and we hear from them all. Whether ideational or lucky, ‘other-siders’ who have experienced death and returned, we’re all at risk in this terrific little novella. As #19145 warns us about being here (with these patients, and in our own heads), ‘It’s hard to outrun the past when you’re still creating it.’ What a stunning, harrowing debut work of fiction.”
Connect With the Author
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About the Author:
Allie Coker lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She holds a BA in English from Davidson College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte.
Her first book, “What I Learned at Davidson”, was published in 2012. Her second book, a novella titled The Last Resort, is her first book of fiction.
Allie has taught creative writing courses as part of the Informal Class program at the University of Texas at Austin as well as at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC. She regularly collaborates with other writers through her editing work.
In 2020, she was selected for a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts residency as well as a Wildacres residency. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network.
Additional Endorsements
“Opening the pages of Last Resort is like opening the doors to a psychiatric institution and encountering a collage of voices unearthing truths about mental illness, suicide, depression, and survival. It is a poignant and candid look into the private lives of patients who have found refuge here before returning to the outside world that refuses to see them or their pain. Allie Coker does an incredible job depicting their plight with compassion and shining light on human disturbances that ail us and mark us as “dark” and “insane” when our reactions aren’t “normal.” Survivors’ stories must be heard and Last Resort is the book that gives them back their voice.”
- Marina DelVecchio, author of Dear Jane
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