Don George

Five Things I've Learned About

How to be a Travel Writer

Presented in partnership with Book Passage

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Join the author of How to Be a Travel Writer, Lonely Planet’s best-selling guide to travel writing, Don George, and discover the Five Things He’s Learned about what makes a great travel story — and how to maximize your chances for publishing success.

Online Event Details

  • 120 minutes

Price

  • Single-Class Ticket - $60.00

View the archive of my two-hour class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about creating and publishing great travel writing.

Join the author of How to Be a Travel Writer, Lonely Planet’s best-selling guide to travel writing. (It’s actually the best-selling travel writing guide in the world!)

I’ve been fortunate enough to be a travel writer and editor all my professional life, more than three decades. I’ve been Travel Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, and Lonely Planet, and I’m now an Editor at Large for National Geographic Travel. Through the years, I’ve learned what makes a great travel story and how to maximize your chances for success in travel writing. My goal in this class is to share the most important lessons I’ve learned, as a writer and as an editor, for both print and online publications.

Some of the questions I’ll answer include: What are the secrets of great travel writing? How do you get started? How do you decide what to write about? How do you research a story before a trip and on the ground?  How do you shape a story for maximum effect? What are the biggest mistakes you should avoid? How do you take your writing from good to great? What’s the best way to work with editors and travel industry professionals? Can you actually make a living as a travel writer? Is it all as good as it sounds?

Whether your goal is simply to write unforgettable emails and wow-inspiring blog posts or to make a career from your travels, I’ll share field-tested tips that will help distinguish your writing from everyone else’s and give you the best chance for realizing your dreams.

I’ve been teaching travel writing for three decades, and I love sharing what I’ve learned along the way.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey into the art and heart of travel writing.

Don George

Don George is the author of the award-winning anthology The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George, and of How to Be a Travel Writer, the best-selling travel writing guide in the world. He is also the editor of ten acclaimed literary anthologies, including A Moveable FeastThe Kindness of Strangers, and An Innocent Abroad.

Don is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Travel, and has been Travel Editor at the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, Salon, and Lonely Planet. He has visited more than 90 countries and has written more than a thousand articles for print and online publications. He has been honored 17 times in the Society of American Travel Writers’ annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism competition. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the renowned Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, now in its 29th year.

As an editor, Don has worked with numerous celebrated writers, including Isabel Allende,  Anthony Bourdain, Paul Bowles, Bill Bryson, Tim Cahill, Dave Eggers, M.F.K. Fisher, Robert Hass, Pico Iyer, Peter Matthiessen, Frances Mayes, Peter Mayle, Alexander McCall Smith, Jan Morris, Eric Newby, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Orlean, Ann Patchett, Francine Prose, Jane Smiley, Gary Snyder, Wallace Stegner, Cheryl Strayed, Paul Theroux, and Simon Winchester.

He remains as passionate about travel and travel writing now as he was at the beginning of his career, and he loves sharing what he’s learned along the way.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Your ticket entitles you to ongoing access to this class — even after the live session concludes.

If you purchase a ticket in time to join the class live, you can view the archive as soon as it’s posted, as often as you like. Look for an email with information about how to access the course archive within 48 hours of the end of the live class. Once you get it, you’ll have all the information you need to access it as you like across any and all devices you own.

If you purchase a ticket after the live class takes place, you can view the archive immediately, and you can return to it as frequently as you like

If you’d like a refund, we can happily credit the card you used to register for the session. Please send a note to pre.event@extendedsession.com , and we’ll confirm receipt as soon as we see it (We don’t need your credit card info – just your email address and date of purchase.)

There are two things to know:

  • Unfortunately, we can only accept cancellations and refunds up to 48 hours before a scheduled session.
  • There is sure to be a lapse in time between the time we refund your order and the time a corresponding credit appears on your credit card statement. So that you’re not left waiting and wondering, we’ll contact you as soon as we’ve processed the credit in our system.

For reasons we hope you’ll understand – the biggest of them the fact that we make a point of compensating the folks who host Five Things I’ve Learned classes as quickly as we can – we can’t accommodate refunds for tickets purchased within 48 of the start of a scheduled live event. We can also accommodate refund requests for the purchase of an archived session only within 24 hours from the time of purchase.

If you’ve purchased a ticket for this online class and you find that for some reason you can’t make the live session, you have two choices:

  • The first: View the session archive. You can view the session archive as soon as it’s posted – or any time, as often as you like. We’ll make an archive of this class available within 48 hours of the live session, and we’ll send every ticket holder details on how they can view it. As a ticket holder, you’re able to view this full session archive any time– as often as you like.
  • The second: Request a refund. Just send a note to pre.event@extendedsession.com, and we’ll help sort things out. Please keep in mind that we can only accommodate refund requests made more than 48 hours from the start of a live session.

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We’ll send another reminder on the day of the class itself, and we’ll be available online just before the class begins to make sure you have no problems joining when the time is right.

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