Workshop: Travel Writing

“Tell me all about your trip!” This request follows travelers as they head out into the world, and it’s one of the first things they hear when they return. When we leave our homes to explore the wider world, we feel compelled to bring home a memorable story. But putting experiences into words and framing an encounter with a new place and culture can often be daunting. This workshop involves a series of short writing exercises and peer responses designed to help writers get past their inhibitions and into the process of writing a story. Exercises focus on writing about place and people.

Date: Saturday, February 29, 2020
Time: 10:00 am to 11:30 am
Location: 1912 Center, Fiske Room, 412 E. 3rd street, Moscow, Idaho

Cost: $10 for PWG members / $15 for non-members*

Registration limited to 38 participants.  If you would like to register online and pay with a credit or debit card you can do so HERE.
If you plan on paying at the door, register by emailing Khaliela Wright at khaliela@gmail.com.  Unfortunately, we cannot accept credit or debit cards at the door, so please bring cash or a check with you when you come.

 

PETER CHILSON teaches writing and literature at Washington State University. He is the author of the travelogue Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa (University of Georgia Press, 1999), and Disturbance-Loving Species: A Novella and Stories (Mariner Books, 2007). His essays, journalism, and short stories have appeared in Foreign PolicyThe American ScholarGulf CoastHigh Country NewsThe New England ReviewNew Letters, Consequence, Fourth GenreAudubonAscent, and Best American Travel Writing. Chilson first traveled to West Africa in 1985 as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach high school English in a village in the Sahara of Niger. A longtime visitor to West Africa, he traveled to Mali in 2012 to cover the civil war for Foreign Policy magazine and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. That trip produced the book, We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches from the Lost Country of Mali (Foreign Policy/Pulitzer Center2013). His latest book is Writing Abroad: A Guide for Travelers (with Joanne Mulcahy, University of Chicago Press, 2017).

 

*Want to become a member?  Check out our membership page.  All members receive a coupon good for $5 off this workshop.

4 Comments

  1. Janet Marugg

    I loved the Travel Writing Class, Khaliela — great exercises and discussion. All the way back to Clarkston I saw awakening waves of fields under stampeding clouds. The shadows were stretched into the folds of earth waves like they were exploring lover’s fingers. I’m haunted by who lived in a collapsed building way back when, what were their hopes and dreams, their loves and losses? It was lovely. I emailed Peter to thank him and I sent Brian Beesley Peter’s contact info since they both write about African Peace Corp experiences.

  2. khaliela

    Here is the promised note from Peter:
    I told the group on Saturday that I would send along an essay by Joan Didion called, “On Keeping a Notebook.” It’s a helpful, inspiring story about writing memoir and and standing one’s ground with a remembered story. Here is a pdf link to that essay. If you can forward that to the group, that would be great.
    Thanks!

    https://accessinghigherground.org/handouts2013/HTCTU%20Alt%20Format%20Manuals/Processing%20PDF%20Sample%20Files/00%20On%20Keeping%20a%20Notebook.pdf

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