Going Places: The Travel Memoir

You’ve probably spent time as an armchair traveler—loved being transported to another land and taken to another culture, just by someone’s well-wrought words. Why not transport readers with your own words to places you saw and loved? Why not write your own travel memoir?

Summon those places, recreate them, make them come alive once more. Taste that food, smell that sea, hear that mysterious music and that melodic new language again. Above all, bring back those people you met, givers of hospitality and laughter who befriended you and made their home yours.

Was it Italy? Japan? A long-ago summer as a student abroad? A recent cruise to the Caribbean? Whether Timbuktu or a national park, it’s all travel, and with the guidance of Richard Goodman, you bring the sights, sounds, and sensual times of your past trips to the page.

In addition to using exercises to retrieve details of people, places, and things, we read selections from inspiring travel memoirs. Feel free to stimulate your memory with photos from your travels—and, better yet, add them to your memoir.

What foreign lands have you fallen in love with? Been changed by? Learned life lessons from? You can return and take others with you when you put your carefully crafted words to paper. Join Richard on that journey.