Travel Writing Near and Far with Michael McColly

Instructor: Michael McColly
This workshop invites writers, travelers, and walkers to see that travel writing begins with learning to see the infinitely interesting, wild, and surprising world that exists outside our own door. We’ll experiment with some local experiences of travel, the basic components of what makes good travel writing, and how they apply for both those distant journeys and those we take knowingly and unknowingly close to home. We’ll also discuss how to develop that eye for detail, wonder, and adventure in writing about the world right before us.

ichael McColly’s essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun, NUVO, and In These Times.  He is the author of the 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir, The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism (Soft Skull Press), which chronicles his journey reporting on AIDS activism in Africa, Asia and America.

He holds a BA degree in Theater and History from Indiana University, MA in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago, and Fiction Writing from the University of Washington.

His present nonfiction focuses on the subject of walking and its effects on physical, psychological and environmental health.   Blending history,  natural history, reportage and memoir, he is chronicling a 63 mile walk along the shore of Lake Michigan through Chicago, industrial Indiana cities of Hammond, East Chicago, and Gary on his way to the Indiana Dunes.

Since 2001 he has been a lecturer in creative nonfiction at Northwestern University’s Masters Program in Creative Writing.