I’ll be teaching a couple of travel writing classes in the coming months, beginning with a three-hour workshop called Writing the Personal Travel Essay Saturday, June 20 at San Diego Writers Ink. I’ve taught a few classes there at their downtown loft and it’s always a lot of fun, with a good turnout of ambitious and thoughtful writers.

In August, I’ll be returning to the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, just north of San Francisco, to teach a three-day class on travel writing and the internet. Organized by Don George of Lonely Planet and Salon fame, the conference draws a great mix of students from around the country, and the faculty is the best you’ll find anywhere. Feel free to drop me an email with questions about either of these.

Photo of Sausalito marina by wili_hybrid via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Last night, after months of work, we finally posted the newly redesigned World Hum. I loved the old design, but it was in dire need of a fresh look, and it was a bit prehistoric in its architecture. This site, designed by the Travel Channel’s Joe Rivera, is a huge improvement.

It’s got everything a newfangled travel website should have: big, splashy photos, great stories, like this piece by Anthony Bourdain, engaging voices like Tom Swick, and video, including this short piece about the redesign itself, and another about a recent reading we had in New York City.

We kicked off the new look with World Hum’s Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time. Dozens of World Hum contributors voted. One of my all-time favorites is number 10 on the list.

Now the real fun begins: filling out the new site with more great travel stories, videos and images.

I put some of Paul Theroux’s books, including “The Old Patagonian Express” and “Riding the Iron Rooster,” at the top of my list of favorite travel books. His latest, “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,” is among his best. So I was happy to interview him recently for World Hum. Among other things, I asked him whether he reads much travel writing these days. His reply:

“I don’t. I read books by my friends. Now and then if a book comes along that’s a real ordeal, I read it. I’m not looking for a well-written book. I’m looking for a book about something that appeals to me, an ordeal appeals to me, a place I’ve never been that’s written about in a penetrating way. I’m not looking for someone just joyriding or a stunt, someone riding a bicycle somewhere or whatever it is. But people used to talk about the death of the novel. That’s a kind of normal reaction to too much of something. But there will always be travel books, as long as there are places to go.

–Sept. 1, 2008

I’ll be talking travel writing and the internet at the Sept. 20-21 conference.

–July 15, 2008