Transform Your Travels Into Meaningful Memoir
I began to write One Italian Summer about six months after returning to Australia. I missed Italy, and I wanted to understand what the journey had meant for me, and for my family. It was not, in the end, just a unique travel experience requiring a bit of hard work and child management.
What was the trip that changed you, inside and out? That made you see the world differently? That made you a different person? Most likely, it was an early trip, perhaps your first ever. Often, those first trips plant the seeds for a love of discovery. They are the ones that can install new perspectives in our […]
You’ve been to a lot of great places. Now you want to write about them. But where’s the story? These 6 fantastic travel memoir authors give their expert advice on how to find the story in your travel experience. Jamie Zeppa, author of Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan We’re often so […]
These five kick ass essays will teach you how to become a better writer. I teach these essays often, and my students universally love them. In my workshops, we discuss why these essays are so memorable, and examine what we can learn from their techniques. Here, I’ll break down for you why these essays are so compelling […]
We all have our endeavours, the things that give us pleasure, meaning, recognition, status. For me, and a lot of other writers, that recognition comes from having my work accepted into literary magazines. Outside of the world of writers, no one cares about these magazines. Most people don’t even know what a literary magazine is, let […]
We were stuck in a traffic jam. Since I had arrived in Chiang Mai just a few days ago, the situation wasn’t very frustrating for me. Everything was still new. I watched the teenagers on bicycles and motorbikes glide past all the cars lined up on Soi 9 off Nimmanhaemin Road. I watched the young woman […]
If you’re like most writers, coming up with a title can be a challenge. I try to convince myself that it should be the fun part, the creative icing on the cake of a story well-told. But that’s often not the case. When I’m about to submit a travel essay for publication and type the title into […]
Travel memoirs are notoriously hard to get published. Yet when they’re done well, they’re my favorite kind of stories to read. Perhaps publishers are put off by author’s propensity to simply write about one’s trip, instead of a deep examination of encountering another culture and transforming oneself. I was fortunate enough to get my travel memoir, Abu Dhabi […]