Peninsula bookstore Kepler’s hosted a set of writing workshops, last month, as part of the Bay Area Book Festival. Travel writer and poet (and BATW board member) Lalit Kumar led one he called, “Writing the Wild: Generative Poetry on Nature, Place and Adventure” in which he read and annotated some of the great nature poets as well as some pieces from his own collection, Yosemite of My Heart. He gave prompts to the writers assembled, and ended his session with the first lines of C.V. Cavafy’s poem Ithaka:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Sort of a blessing for travelers – this was an appropriate jumping off point for the next session on travel-writing that he and member Alec Scott then led. They divided their session between talking about the craft (the bedeviling problem of how to lead, what is a telling detail) and the business end of it (pitching, AI). The photo shows Alec talking about two recent pieces, one on the Shetland Islands and the other on Singapore. Lalit kicked off the discussion of leads with the start of a piece he recently wrote on Barcelona and its finally completed cathedral, Sagrada Familia. – Alec Scott
This sounds like a terrific presentation! Nice work.
I am so glad the event went well. Since I couldn’t organize a booth for batw at the bay area book festival this year, I thought let’s at least offer a travel writing workshop. I am so glad the book festival folks accepted my application for the workshop and that Lalit was willing to take leadership on the project! Congrats!!! a win win!