This is an in person event at the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont!

Coggins, author of the instant fishing classic The Optimist, will join us at the American Museum of Fly Fishing to discuss his new book. The Believer wades into deeper waters and shares new wisdom, humor, and experience in seven extraordinary fly-fishing expeditions.

In David Coggins’s previous book, The Optimist, he tackles the techniques of fly fishing and meditates on its virtues, recounting his triumphs and frustrations. Now, in The Believer, he deftly mixes travel, local cultures, further fishing challenges (some knee-buckling in their disappointment), and details his own experience as life and love crowd his time to fish. Self-consciously—and self-deprecatingly—Coggins embarks on seven far-flung fishing voyages, away from screens and social media, not answering his phone, reveling in humanity’s undying yearning for a quest, for the rituals and rites of passage that mark transition. For David, these journeys not only showcase his skill as an angler—including to Norway, Scotland, Spain, Cuba, and Argentina, as well as road trips to Wyoming, Tennessee, and the Catskills—they also signal the end of his fly-fishing youth. But that doesn’t mean that David will sell all his rods and hang up his hat; rather, that his relationship with his fly-fishing obsession will evolve. And he’s okay with that—mostly, especially if he can catch an elusive salmon or a ferociously strong tarpon or the mysterious and almost invisible bonefish.

The Believer is a humble, humorous call for the journey that is part of the destination, where the search for greater self-awareness leads to patience, observation, and endurance. And, since this is fly fishing, after all—there’s always the possibility of abject failure and leaping, glorious reward. Wry, entertaining, thoughtful, and relatable, The Believer will hook both anglers and non-anglers alike.

David Coggins is the author of Men and Manners and the New York Times bestseller Men and Style. He writes about fly fishing for Robb Report and tailoring, drinking, and travel for numerous publications, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg Pursuits, and Condé Nast Traveler. He writes The Contender newsletter. Coggins lives in New York and fishes regularly in the Catskills, Wisconsin, and Montana.

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