What makes for good travel writing? How do you get into the profession? What practical, ethical and political challenges come with the job? Who are the great travel writers and what can we learn from them? Can an outsider ever fairly and accurately represent a given place, society or culture?
University of Portsmouth lecturer, travel book author, foreign affairs journalist and Star & Crescent Co-Editor-in-Chief Tom Sykes and writer-photographer Alexander Sebley will explore these questions and more in their event taking place on the 15th February in Eldon Building, University of Portsmouth at 6pm.
The talk will reference their travels across four continents and their recent collaboration on the upcoming Bradt Guidebook to Ivory Coast. They also offer practical advice on the craft and explore the various sub-genres of travel writing from guidebooks to service articles to narrative travelogues.
Tom Sykes’s travelogues and foreign affairs features have appeared in The Telegraph, New Statesman, Scotsman, New Internationalist, London Magazine, Red Pepper and New African. He is the co-editor of the successful No Such Thing As a Free Ride? series of travel anthologies, the first of which was named the Observer‘s Travel Book of the Month. He is the author of the Bradt Guide to Ivory Coast and is working on a travel-inflected novel entitled Blood is Not Thicker in Manila. Tom teaches travel writing, amongst other genres, in his capacity as Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth.
Living in London, Alexander Sebley is a writer, photographer and label manager who has worked for VICE, the BBC, Bradt Travel Guides, London Fashion Week Magazine and many other publications and organisations.
