Re-thinking Travel Writing: The Journey of a Genre (2024) (Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism)

By: Ben Stubbs and Lee Mylne

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Synopsis: This book stems from the question that we as co-authors grappled with for the past 3-plus years while in our own periods of stasis during the pandemic: What place does the travel writing genre hold in a post-COVID world? With the massive interruptions to travel and travel writing across 2020-2023 as the pandemic forced us indoors and into isolation, it also raised many other pertinent questions about the practice of and future of travel writing. Part of the prompt for this book comes from the post-pandemic assumption that in an ecologically fraught, less mobile, and more uncertain world, there may not be a place for travel writing as we know it to exist in any meaningful way. We examine the problems and solutions apparent for travel writing as it engages with a period of re-thinking, prompted by the pandemic, though necessary for a plethora of other reasons as well. As academics and travel writing practitioners, with decades of experience in the field, we offer a unique perspectiveon this topic – as we have the in-the-field experience of professional travel writers, and we have the academic grounding to better understand the history, theoretical concerns and contradictions of the genre to provide a more in-depth perspective to our travel writing colleagues. This grounding allows us to access a unique and valuable perspective for Re-thinking Travel Writing: The Journey of a Genre for academics, aspiring travel writers and contemporary colleagues in the field.