Travel Writing Workshop with Stef Ferrari

Travel writing is more than beautiful scenery and exotic meals. It’s about transforming movement into meaning, capturing a sense of place, and creating connection. This workshop explores how to craft vivid, insightful travel writing. We’ll explore the fundamentals: sensory details, cultural observation, and emotional honesty, as well as how they play out in narratives, whether you’re writing memoir, journalistic/reported pieces, essays/blogs, or fiction rooted in place. We’ll take a brief journey through travel writing history—from early explorers and the Grand Tour tradition to literary and journalistic milestones—to get a glimpse of how the genre has evolved, and why it still matters in a post-social media world.

The works we will look at include:

• Colson Whitehead — Colossus of New York
• Anthony Bourdain — A Cook’s Tour
• Jumpa Lahiri — In Other Words
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — Italian Journey
• Stendhal — Rome, Naples and Florence
• Viet Thanh Nguyen — Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
• M.F.K. Fisher — Essays

We’ll discuss how to:

• Identify the core of a travel story
• Write with ethical awareness and respect
• Use sensory cues and structure to bring experiences to life
• Choose form and tone for your story (personal, journalistic, immersive, reflective

All levels are welcome — just bring a notebook and a memory.

Stef Ferrari is a New York Times bestselling author, and an Emmy-winning writer, producer, and artist. Her forthcoming debut novel is a queer YA rom-com set in Brooklyn amid the magic of the holiday season. As a journalist, she’s a contributing writer to publications including The New York Times, and covers her greatest obsession: women’s sports.

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