R282. Travelogue in Flames: Writing the Limit of Cultural Exchange

Portland Ballroom 252, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Thursday, March 28, 2019
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

Travel writing works on the promise of cultural exchange. Whatever its mode, travelogue functions by assembling a takeaway—but what if writers have ethical, emotional, or creative hesitations about taking anything? How can a writer interrogate subjectivity without further privileging? Tours in a nation yours invaded, unreasonable boredom abroad, guilt of vacationing where others can’t leave: four writers discuss interventions in a form still asking us for souvenirs.


Participants

Moderator:

Nabil Kashyap is the author of The Obvious Earth, a collection of essays. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Full Stop, Seneca Review and elsewhere. A librarian at Swarthmore College, he lives in Philadelphia.

Caren Beilin is the author of an autofiction, Spain, and a novel, The University of Pennsylvania. Her writing appears in Fence, The Offing, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Hilary Plum's books include Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose, and Watchfires, winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program, and she is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center.

Steven Dunn is the author of the novels Potted Meat and Water & Power. Some of his work can be found in Granta, Blink Ink Print, and Best of Small Fictions 2018. He is currently an MFA candidate at Goddard College.

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Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center