TRAVEL WRITING still conjures up images of intrepid writers being sent across the globe to report on “undiscovered gems” or, more mundanely, a particular location’s top hotels.

In fact, travel writing—when done well—can be great literature and not just an accounting of a place’s top draws.

The award-winning travel writer Tom Swick writes:

“a travel story, in the right hands, can have the narrative flow of a short story, the substance of a history lesson, the discursiveness of an essay, the elegance of poetry, and the—often inadvertent— self-revelation
of a memoir.”

This lecture will illuminate the ten places travel writers go wrong in failing to do the above and, more importantly, it will emphasize the necessary ingredients for making memorable writing. Using published examples to illustrate where good travel writers go right, this session will give attendees specific tools and a good sense of how to turn their observations and experiences of a place into great literature.

About Evan Balkin

Evan is an adjunct faculty member in the Johns Hopkins University’s graduate Teaching Writing program, and he also coordinates the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County, where he runs the creative writing program. He has served as a guest lecturer at Yale, Bryn Mawr and many other institutions. He is the author of six books of non-fiction, including Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre; Revolutionary of the Americas as well as numerous essays and short fiction in an array of publications. His novel Spitfire (Amphorae Publishing, 2018) was adapted into a screenplay that won both the Baltimore Screenwriters Competition and a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellowship.