This image is the result of a free-writing exercise my wife Kiki led near the Louvre, during the 2022 Paris Writing Workshops. Kiki is a classically trained actress, and she drew on her stage skills to create an exercise where students lingered near the Louvre, attempting to describe people in their journals without using adjectives,…
The joys and challenges of living and working in Antarctica, with Karen Pszonka
Kevin Harrison on storytelling from places and people we don’t typically hear about.
“Good Digs in Timbuktu” By Nicholas D. Kristof (an excerpt) It was the slow train to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa, and it had just stopped at the border of the Ivory Coast. Among the mango sellers alongside the train, I found two Canadians who were headed in the same direction.…
The life and disappearance of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio and his travelers’ sanctum in Syria
Creative persistence: The art of writing (and finishing) better long-form narratives
By Rolf Potts Most any journey can, at moments, have a way of making a traveler feel like he’s navigating a blurred line between present and past. Walk through the urban slums at the outskirts of modern Mumbai, and you can get a sense for what New York’s Lower East Side might have felt like…
Marcia deSanctis on revisiting places, souvenirs, and travel as self-reinvention
I am happy to announce that my new book, The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel, will be released by Ballantine Books in October of this year, and is available for preorder from your favorite local or online bookstore. Information about promotions, book-tour events, and a tie-in Deviate podcast…
Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New places that have never seen you Will startle a little at your entry. Old places that know you well Will pretend nothing Changed since your last visit. When you travel, you find…
On confronting discontent, travel as education, and how to write a Big Idea book.
