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Write travel essay on a topic of your choice.
- Travel Essay (1,300 words or more) Write a travel essay on a topic of your choice.
Travel writing is a form of creative non-fiction in which the author shares a personal experience, such as an encounter with another place or culture. In contrast to op-eds, travel essays may not contain an explicit argument, but, rather, are unified by a central theme. While travel essays may be of various lengths, they often run long, and may rely on detailed description, dialogue, and other story-telling techniques. Travel writing may be categorized into a range of sub-genres and topics: travel to controversial locations or so-called “dark tourism,” encounters with natives, adventure travel, unexpected insights in traveling to iconic locations, traveling to discover local foods, the American road trip, travel to discover one’s roots or oneself, and even a broader definition of “travel” to encompass immigrants, refugees, or those who live abroad for a longer time. Over the past year and a half, some writers have addressed what it’s like to travel during a pandemic. Published in a variety of magazines for diverse audiences, some travel essays have been reprinted in the Best American Travel Writing annual series.
- Query Letter (around one page) CLICK HERE
Please accompany your travel essay with a query letter directed towards the imagined editor of your intended publication venue. Most magazines choose their travel essays from many submissions. To get published, you are typically expected to write a query summarizing your article’s central idea and explaining what makes your piece different from others on the same or a similar subject.
Please paste your query to the editor, travel essay, and optional Works Cited list of any sources consulted into a single Microsoft Word compatible document and submit through Canvas Assignments by Sunday, 1/30.
[For an example of an original and revised draft of a query letter, see the following examples and advice from the Complete Guide to Query Letters for Travel Writers by Roy Stevenson: https://www.pitchtravelwrite.com/query-letter-sample.html ]
Evaluation Criteria:
- Compelling Focus/Central Theme: (40 points) Is your travel essay innovative and imaginative in its subject and/or in the approach to the subject? For example, have you chosen a topic that is significant but perhaps not familiar to your intended readers or, if you are writing about a well-known topic, have you found an unexpected, compelling angle for presenting it? Is there a clear and interesting central theme to your travel essay?
- Engaging Story: (120 points) A well-told story is the essence of travel writing. It’s important how you frame and organize your story and how you make it come alive for readers. As a form of creative nonfiction, travel writing makes use of deliberate choices in style, tone, and description. Some travel essays make use of dialogue. Some include images. As a final stage to your writing process, the story should be edited for clarity and mechanics. In assessing your essay, I will consider if you have made good use of the affordances of the travel genre in telling an engaging story.
- Query Letter: (40 points) Does your accompanying query letter compellingly explain to potential editors what makes your article innovative and appealing to readers of your target publication?
Orleans, Susan. “Do We Transcend Before or After We Purchase the Commemorative Eel Cakes”
Outside. 2004. https://www.outsideonline.com/1921836/do-we-transcend-or-after-we-purchase-commemorative-eel-cakes?page=all
In this essay, Orleans relates her visit to the iconic Mt. Fuji in Japan. Before scaling the mountain, she witnesses multiple versions of this famous icon: through people’s accounts, in theme parks, on key chains. When she finally gets to the top though what she sees is different from what she has been anticipating. This makes us think, more generally, about how encounters with iconic places often make us see them in a new way. Orleans is an accomplished travel writer and memoirist. Her essay is a good example of how to structure a travel story, building up to a surprise ending.
Least Heat-Moon, William. “Nameless, Tennessee.” Blue Highways: A Journey into America. 1982.
Many people associate travel writing with exotic or iconic destinations, but sometimes the best travel writing is about the out of the way places that few people think to visit. That is the case with Least Heat-Moon’s “Nameless, Tennessee.” He uses dialogue and humor to discuss his investigation into how the town “Nameless” got its name. Although part of a longer book, this piece has been republished as a separate essay. Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways is a classic in the American road trip travel sub-genre.
Kincaid is a native of Antigua who immigrated to the United States. She writes this anti-travel narrative for potential tourists who come to her homeland to enjoy an exotic ocean vacation. However, such tourists are generally oblivious of the natives’ history and their troubled culture. Written primarily in second person, addressing the reader as “you,” the essay makes good use of rhetorical devices, convincing tourists to reconsider the way that they travel. Small Place has achieved critical recognition and is a classic in the anti-travel genre.
Ehrlich is a well-known travel writer who focuses on environmental issues. “Rotten Ice” recounts her journey traveling by dogsled in the melting arctic. This is a good example of combining travel writing with an activist message about fighting climate change. In addition to a compelling narrative, Ehrlich includes photographs from her journey to further illustrate the scene and to bring home her message to readers.
Bryant, Jackie. “Life, Death, and the Border Patrol.” Sierra. In Best American Travel Writing 2020.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2019-6-november-december/last-words/life-death-and-border-patrol
In this short essay, Bryant relates her experience while volunteering for the nonprofit Border Angels. With other volunteers, she encounters the border police while in the process of transporting water to leave for migrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. Bryant incorporates creative nonfiction techniques such as description and dialogue as well as informing readers of the horrible conditions faced by migrants.
Benning, Jim. “Senegal’s Beating Heart.” Westways. In Best American Travel Writing 2021.
http://www.jimbenning.net/stories/2020/5/2/senegals-beating-heart
This article gives an account of the author’s trip to Senegal where he goes to the music city of Dakar. He gives a vivid account of the music scene and of his interactions with local people. In telling the story of his experience, Benning incorporates creative nonfiction techniques such as description and dialogue, as well as weaving in cultural and historical information about Senegal history.
Galuten, Noah. “Food, It Turns Out, Has Little to Do With Why I Love to Travel.” Eater. In Best American
Travel Writing, 2021.
https://www.eater.com/2020/10/13/21498819/food-expectations-travel-to-eat-covid-19
Galuten, a chef and a food writer, describes what it’s like to sample foods on a road trip during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. He relates going to restaurants for takeout and finding it impossible to get the same enjoyment out of food as when experiencing it with others in a restaurant setting where one would have the opportunity to discover the local culture, not just the food.
Gunn, Meghan. “To the Swimmer in the Borneo Rainforest.” Off Assignment. In Best American Travel
Writing, 2021. https://www.offassignment.com/articles/meghan-gunn
Gunn relates her experience doing volunteer work in the Borneo. She writes the travel essay in a form of a letter addressed to a companion who is assigned as her protector in a potentially dangerous environment. He helps her to escape from an attempted assault, and she is eventually able to recover her love of travel, although with a new found understanding of what it entails to travel abroad alone as a young woman.
MWrite a travel essay on a topic of your choice.
https://gen.medium.com/the-new-york-you-once-knew-is-gone-the-one-you-loved-remains-2dbd68ca0eae
MacNicoi explores what it’s like to continue living in New York City following the Covid-19 outbreak. Exploring the city by bike after being quarantined in an apartment with Covid, MacNicoi notes what is still the same about the city and what has changed. This is a type of travel essay that is rooted in a space one already knows but that examines how the place changes after a time of crisis.
This is a student essay written for my WRIT 1122 course in 2018 and published in the DU magazine WRIT Large. Rosenblatt describes his changing perceptions of the town in which famous writer William Faulkner was born. [I encourage you all to consider submitting your work to this student magazine; we’re taking submissions for next year.]
A good place to find further examples of travel essays is the Best American Travel Writing anthology. Here is a link to the most recent copy. You can search the table of contents and if you find a title that strikes you, usually you can find an online version:
Daily Schedule:
Canvas discussion board post due by midnight.
- (8 points) (around 300 words or more) To get a sense of the travel essay genre, skim through the examples provided in the “Sample Travel Essays” bibliography above. Then choose one that interests you about which to write a response: What resonated with you about this travel essay? What stood out as the central theme of this essay? What made it a well-told story? You can consider, for instance, the author’s choices in style, tone, description, dialogue, images, framing, or other elements of creative non-fiction.
- (12 points) (similar in length and structure to the example provided below) Choose a potential topic for your travel essay and write a query letter to the editor of a specific potential publication venue pitching your travel essay to their magazine or newspaper. For an example of a query letter written to the publisher before the actual essay is completed, see the original and revised query letters posted by Roy Stevenson, author of The Complete Guide to Query Letters for Travel Writers:
Please note that this example is for a query letter intended for 4X4, a magazine that evidently invites a flowery writing style; if you are writing for a different type of magazine, such as the New Yorker, your style might be more concise, even ironic. The example is mainly intended to give you a sense of how to revise in terms of structure (coming to the point of the article up front) and content.
[This exercise is intended as practice with thinking through ideas for a potential travel essay as well as rough draft practice with query letter writing. If you change your mind later and decide to write about something else, that’s fine.]
1) By midnight Thursday post a rough draft of your travel essay with query letter on the Canvas discussion board. These need to be on time so your peers can have some flexibility about when to complete their reviews. Peers are not expected to write reviews for late papers. Please post one attachment with the query letter followed by the travel essay. You will receive 4 points for posting a full draft of the query letter and 4 points for posting a full draft of the travel essay.
2) By midnight Friday, 1/28, post reviews for your peers. You can receive up to 12 points for completing thoughtful reviews with constructive feedback towards revision for the peers in your group. Guidelines for the peer reviews will be provided on Canvas.
Write a travel essay on a topic of your choice..