Faith Adiele will lead Rethinking Travel Writing, a Zoom course running Saturdays from September 6 to October 4, 1–3 p.m. EST. The course blends craft with critique, challenging colonial narratives of travel. Guest speakers include Bani Amor (Sept 6), Noo Saro-Wiwa (Sept 13), Carey Baraka (Sept 20), and Pier Nirandara (Sept 27). For more information, see https://www.offassignment.com/rethinking-travel-writing
Gary Singh’s long-form story, Truth is the Timeless One, was published on Hidden Compass in May. After a nagging sense of loss permeated decades of Gary’s reporting in San José, a discovery in his mom’s closet catapulted him to Jalandhar, India, where he faced the impact of the sudden haphazard borders imposed by Partition. The bloodshed of that era rippled forward in coincidences, revealing how “Truth is the Timeless One,” now published at Hidden Compass.
A book Laurie McAndish King co-edited, Wandering in American Deserts: Discovery, Visions, Redemption, was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The anthology included stories by Laurie and other BATW members Madeleine Adkins, MJ Pramik and Anne Sigmon.
Laurie interviewed National Geographic Photographer Catherine Karnow for The Women’s Eye Podcast. Listen in as Karnow talks about the ways travel photography can change people’s lives—her workshops have changed the lives of both participants and the people they’re making images of. Karnow views photography in almost spiritual terms. She says, “I give you the space to pour yourself into my camera, into me and into my compassion for you, for me. What I’m saying through photography is, I accept you fully.”
Laurie also interviewed culinary tour leader Naomi Duguid, who writes beautiful, award-winning cookbooks that take us traveling and explore home-cooked foods through recipes, stories, and photographs. Duguid takes small groups of travelers on extraordinary culinary adventures in northern Thailand and the Republic of Georgia. She says, “It’s people’s relationship to the food that’s interesting… What tools do people have? What are they short of? What does that mean? So it was clear to me that food is the way to understand so much, from labor and economics to social relations.”