Literary Travel Writing

This Saturday I'll be teaching a one day workshop on Literary Travel Writing at the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD. I know that many of you, dear readers, are nowhere near this venue, but perhaps you will share my enthusiasm for some of the memoirs we'll be discussing, apropos of their use of various techniques from fiction and poetry.

For specificity:

Joan Didion's "Some Dreamers of he Golden Dream" Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Jon Swain's River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia



For imagery:

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Camel Like Only Camel" Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places

Rupert Isaacson, The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert



For dialogue:

Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana

Ian Frazier's Great Plains



For conjecture:

Nancy Marie Brown's The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman



For detail and listing:

M.F.K. Fisher's Long Ago in France



For use of detail, repetition, and listing-- and structure:

V.S. Naipaul's A Turn in the South


A longer list of recommended travel memoirs is here.
My own books and other publications are here.



About this workshop:

April 16, 2016 Bethesda MD
(Saturday, one day only)

The Writer's Center
10 am - 1 pm
Literary Travel Writing 
Take your travel writing to another level: the literary, which is to say, giving the reader the novelistic experience of actually traveling there with you. For both beginning and advanced writers, this workshop covers the techniques from fiction and poetry that you can apply to this specialized form of creative nonfiction for deliciously vivid effects.

>Register for this workshop on-line here.

>More detailed description of the workshop here. (Link goes to my article about literary travel writing for the Writer's Carousel)

>Questions about this workshop? Email me here.

The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut by James McWilliams

Summer Travel Reading: 10 Faves

Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project

Exploring Marfa, Texas & Environs in 24 Podcasts

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Literary Travel Writing Workshop on September 8th at the Writer's Center, Bethesda MD

Rainbow in Camp Denali, July 2012 (c) C.M. Mayo 2012

Take your travel writing to another level: the literary, which is to say, giving the reader the novelistic experience of actually traveling there with you. For both beginning and advanced writers, this workshop covers the techniques from fiction and poetry that you can apply to this specialized form of creative nonfiction for deliciously vivid effects. 

One day only, Sunday September 8 from 1 - 5 pm
The Writer's Center
4508 Walsh St
Bethesda MD (just outside Washington DC)
www.writer.org

About the instructor:
C.M. Mayo is the author of the novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which was named a Library Journal Best Book of 2009. She is also the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles Through Baja California, the Other Mexico, a travel memoir of Mexico's Baja Califorinia peninsula; and Sky over El Nido, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is the editor of a collection of Mexican literature in translation, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. For more about C.M. Mayo and her work, visit www.cmmayo.com.


>> For more information about this workshop and to register on-line click here.

We'll be looking at a variety of techniques, mainy from fiction and poetry, but one of the most basic for beginning a draft is simply noticing specific detail that appeals to the senses. From my notes from a recent journey to Alaska (you'll see it's not brain surgery):

Denali, of course. Spatulated lavender.
Other sights: 
receding moose; levering hind legs
polkadots of Dall sheep on green
3 blues of Wonder Lake

Heard:
eeee  eeee eeee
gravel underfoot
freeway roar of distant river

Smelled:
wet moss
drying socks
hot chocolate

Tasted:
cloudberry (spit the pip!)
Hoof N Woof honey (flowers of a season ago)
cinnamon gummy bear 

Felt:
unfriendly bear pelt
chocolatey-suave beaver pelt
sinking into spongy tundra mosses

Bright on the ground:
monk's hood; mushroom caps, sparkle of water

In the sky:
eagle; rainbow; moon

New to remember:
charismatic megafauna
braided river
Michio Hoshino's photographs and mini-essays



+ + + +

For further surfing:

>From the Workshop: Literary Travel Writing by C.M. Mayo, Writer's Carousel, Spring 2009

>Listen to my most recent Marfa Mondays podcast, "We Have Seen the Lights"

>Read some excerpts from my memoir, Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico. 

>Recommended travel memoirs.

> Questions about this workshop? Just ask!

Podcasting for Writers at the Writer's Center, Bethesda MD

I've had such fun learning to podcast, I am really looking forward to giving the new 2 hour workshop PODCASTING FOR WRITERS at the Writer's Center on May 5th. (More information about my other workshops, including HOW (AND HOW NOT) TO WRITE DIALOGUE here). I'll be talking about the technical stuff, of course, but also choosing from the among the astonishingly wide range of possible formats. Just for example, I've made podcasts out of

a panel discussion at a writer's conference

a book presentation

reading of an excerpt from a book

reading of a guest-blog post

some tips for my workshop students

an interview with another writer
an interview with a wilderness expert as part of an ongoing travel memoir

And there are many more formats to consider... it's a cornucopia.

So we'll start off with your intentions; an overview of the flourishing menu of options; looking at your time and money (and anxiety) budget; and with that in mind, figuring out what works best for you.

The goal is that you will be able to go home and make your own plain vanilla podcast.

>>MORE INFO AND REGISTER HERE.

UPDATE: PODCASTING FOR WRITERS & OTHER CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURS is available from Dancing Chiva as an ebook December 2012
>>Click here to visit the website