by Writing Workshops Staff
2 hours ago
You don't need a passport to write a great travel novel. According to Arielle Burgdorf, novelist, literary translator, and instructor of The Art of Wanderlust: Travel Writing in Fiction at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature, the richest material for travel fiction is rarely the trip itself. It's the attention you bring to the world around you, whether that world is a foreign capital or the bus route across town.
Across six Wednesdays on Zoom this June, Arielle's generative workshop teaches fiction writers to read landscape as character clue, to choose which travels are worth fictionalizing in the first place, and to write about places and cultures they may never have visited through research instead of memoir. Arielle is the author of the novel Prétend (End of the Line Press, 2024), released in the UK as Jeanne (Moist Books, 2025), and brings to the class a translator's ear for cultural nuance and a generous, reading-recommendation-heavy teaching style. By the end of the course, students walk away with one or two travel narratives of roughly ten pages each, plus a brainstormed list of others to pursue. The workshop is open to all levels, whether you've crossed continents or rarely traveled past your zip code.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Arielle:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Arielle. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Arielle Burgdorf: Hello everyone! My name is Arielle and I write novels in my spare time while teaching and finishing up a PhD in Literature. I live in the UK with my partner and a very cute, very spoiled hound dog. I'm very dedicated to my characters, and I spend a lot of time thinking about their personalities and transformations. I often feel the need to live a thousand lives, and fiction is one way I can try on those lives and explore those possibilities.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life—and how does this class address that?
Arielle Burgdorf: I wish someone had told me that you don't need to wait for the muse or inspiration to strike. I spent ages waiting for the right moment or vision. There is no perfect moment to begin writing, you have to initiate the journey yourself. This class is all about travel and movement, and I wish to underscore that the most powerful element you bring to writing travel in fiction is not expensive trips or experiences— it's your own imagination, which makes it accessible to everyone.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Arielle Burgdorf: I hope that the class will challenge your idea of what counts as "travel" in writing, and that it shifts to more about focusing on the environment around you, whether that's in your mind or not, and choosing which specific details you want to bring out for the reader and how you want to present them.
"There is no perfect moment to begin writing, you have to initiate the journey yourself."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Arielle Burgdorf: From a plaque accompanying an art exhibit: In Catalan, one of the artist's favorite regions, the term fer sarafeig — to do laundry — was local slang for gossip.
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop—one you were teaching or one you took as a student—where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Arielle Burgdorf: This was a long time ago, but I was taking a writing class and I was working with a very old laptop where several of the keys did not work, and I was explaining this to the professor as a positive, like this was an Oulipo-type of constraint that was actually going to improve my writing, and she stopped me and said "Arielle, we're going to get you a new laptop, I'm putting you in touch with the scholarship fund people." And obviously that's a more pragmatic example and less craft based, but it really brought home for me that you do need to have the basic tools for writing and you can't compromise on them or everything gets a little too absurdist.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept—a small, specific technique.
Arielle Burgdorf: I like fragmentary writing, short snippets and short chapters. I like that they force the author to narrow in on what they are trying to say with less ornamentation. Massive walls of stream of consciousness give me a slight feeling of anxiety as a reader; there's something about the lack of visual space on the page I find daunting.
Ready to bring this kind of close craft attention to your own travel fiction? Spend six generative Wednesdays with Arielle this June.
Enroll in The Art of Wanderlust →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Arielle Burgdorf: I really recommend Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter. The subject matter is dark, but the book maintains this sense of magic throughout in a way that's impressive.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Arielle Burgdorf: Write what you know. It's not terrible advice, you should draw from your own reality and experience, but it's also important as writers and people to push out of our comfort zones and learn about other worlds. Samantha Harvey did not win the Booker for her novel Orbital because she had first-hand experience being an astronaut! But she did the research, she learned about space travel, and it made for a really interesting read.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Arielle Burgdorf: At least if you are me, you'll end up cutting about one third to half the things you write. I put it into a document, and generally it's never seen again. But all of the writing, including the part you ultimately get rid of, is part of the thinking process and therefore very necessary.
"All of the writing, including the part you ultimately get rid of, is part of the thinking process and therefore very necessary."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Arielle Burgdorf: Maybe Weetzie Bat from the series by Francesca Lia Block.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe—in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Arielle Burgdorf: Serious fun, and I give lots of reading recommendations based on your personal taste.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Arielle Burgdorf: Although I have done multiple cross-country road trips, I really hate driving!
Arielle is a cross-country road tripper who, as it turns out, hates driving. That kind of contradiction is exactly what this class trains you to mine. Travel fiction doesn't ask for love letters to the open road. It asks for attention, the willingness to be ambivalent, and the discipline to choose which details earn their place on the page. Whether you're deep in a novel-in-progress or starting something new, six Wednesdays with Arielle will give you the craft tools to make your travel narratives land.
Six Wednesdays. One translator-novelist who treats travel as a mindset, not a budget. Open to all levels, whether you've circumnavigated the globe or never left your hometown.
Save Your Seat in The Art of Wanderlust →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
