Next Meeting: Travel Writing talk by Prof Tim Youngs (Thu 7th Nov)

We’ve got a great session coming up this week at Knights Court, with Professor Tim Youngs unveiling the winners of our recent Travel Writing competition.

We wanted to explore this genre again as it is an often overlooked area, despite having some serious big guns in its back catalogue (Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, George Orwell) as well as being popularised by the back door through often hilarious escapades (Bill Bryson, Tony Hawks, Dave Gorman – I only realised in hindsight that Round Ireland With A Fridge was as much travel writing as it was daft comedy fuelled by a drunken bet).

Tim, our guest speaker, is the Director of the Centre for Travel Writing Studies, which he founded in 2002-3, based within Nottingham Trent University. He has specialised in the field for 30 years, although he also undertakes teaching and research in many other areas of literary studies. His most recent single-authored books include The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing and Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation at the fin de Siècle (both 2013). Co-edited 2019 works are The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, and The Ashgate Research Companion to Travel Writing. He is currently writing The Oxford Very Short Introduction to Travel Writing and a book on motorcycle travel narratives. He founded in 1997, and continues to edit, the journal Studies in Travel Writing (published four times a year by Routledge). With Peter Hulme, he edits the series Routledge Research in Travel Writing.

If that wasn’t enough, he is also a poet, much of whose work is travel-themed. His poems have appeared in several print and online magazines, including The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review and Stride. His debut pamphlet, Touching Distance, was published by Five Leaves in November 2017. With Sarah Jackson he co-edited the anthology In Transit: Poems of Travel, published by the Emma Press in June 2018.

I think we can agree he knows his stuff.

All are welcome to come and listen to Tim and readings of the winning competition entries. We’re at the community room at Knights Court, Balderton Gate, Newark, NG24 1UJ 7 pm – 9 pm. (Free to Fosseway Writers members, £1 non-members).