Wherever we go, we takes ourselves with us. Travel writing is about the inner journey, the outer landscape, the politics of place and people, and the ways in which we navigate through the mundane, the sublime and the terrifying. It is also an opportunity to wake up to the "other" in ways that can help heal the world. How do we write and travel at the same time? What's the difference between a travel blog and a travel book? How do we transform our personal journey into a universal experience?
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." (Mark Twain) Good travel writing is too.

Faculty:
Janet Thomas was born in Wales and lived in Canada before she started writing poems and protesting the Vietnam War on the streets of Seattle in 1969. Throughout the 1970s she meditated and walked for peace with the Japanese Buddhist monks who moved to her neighborhood to protest the Bangor Nuclear Submarine Base. Her plays, written and produced throughout the 80s, explore the moral, spiritual & ethical complexities of abortion, sexual abuse, nuclear war, the war against the environment and between the sexes. She's written books about cheap travel throughout the west and been the editor of a magazine about spas around the world. Her book, "The Battle in Seattle" was inspired by the farmers from around the world who showed up on the streets of WTO Seattle. Her most recent book, "Day Breaks Over Dharamsala--A Memoir of Life Lost and Found," is an exploration of spiritual healing. She lives and teaches on San Juan Island in the far northwest corner of Washington State in the U.S.