Crossing Borders: Travel Writing in Three Genres

In her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings,  Eudora Welty states,  “Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations.”  She argues that like travelers, writers are preoccupied with discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life as well as in the lives of others.  Connections slowly emerge. “Like distant landmarks you are approaching, cause and effect begin to align themselves, draw closer together. “  Often these connections are made in retrospect, from a distance, after you have traveled to a new place and are able to look back from where you’ve come.  In this writing workshop, we will discuss the elements of narration shared by fiction writers, poets and travel writers—character development, setting, point of view and dialogue.  We will read classic and contemporary authors, discussing how those writers look back through a lens of distance and memory at places and people in order to create stories that make good narrative sense.   We will explore our own memories through writing exercises, generating real and imagined stories that are enhanced by the element of travel.