Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA)—at the time the largest and preeminent multi-genre summer workshop for writers of color—asked me to start a travel writing workshop. My heart thrummed. If any literary genre were in need of desegregation and decolonization, it was travel writing.
Read MoreBolts of lightning flashed across the night sky, the only lights besides those flickering in the distance more than 3,000 meters below at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, glimmering evidence of refuge I would do just about anything for.
Read MoreAs part of our series on responsible travel writing, we recently spoke with Xu Xi 許素細, Indonesian-Chinese-American, born and raised in Hong Kong. She is the author of fourteen books of fiction and nonfiction and one of Hong Kong’s leading writers in English. She is also editor of five anthologies of Asian writing in English, most recently, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology. She currently occupies the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross and leads international writing retreats through Authors at Large.
Read MoreAs part of our series on responsible travel writing, Dr. Anu Taranath explores the politics of writing by contributing a series of TIPS Letters, an exercise that has become a cornerstone of her teaching on culture, diversity, and social justice. You can use the exercise to engage more deeply with Things, Ideas, People, and even yourself.
Read MoreWhat does it mean to decolonize, or de-center, travel writing? How do we respect and acknowledge the cultures we visit? In a field rife with mis-representation and exoticization, we get one step closer to authentic representation with our new series of essays and interviews with some of the world’s best writers.
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