Sunday, December 6th, 2026

Live Seminar via Zoom from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PST): 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM / Chicago (CST): 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM / New York (EST): 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM / London (GMT): 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM / Berlin (CET): 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Now Enrolling! Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us.

Instructor Cristina Slattery has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek Japan, Forbes Travel Guide, Harvardwood Highlights, Roads & Kingdoms, The Winter Film Awards, FoodandWine.com, Words Without Borders, AFAR.com, Travel+Leisure.com, several airline magazines, and other national and international magazines and websites. She currently lives in the New York area, but she lived and worked in Barcelona for five years and enjoyed the life of an expat since it helped to hone her powers of observation and also allowed her to think in different languages. She has lived and worked in Boston, a city she also finds charming. She has also been a producer on a Netflix documentary called When a Dream Comes True.

Who is this class for?

This online writing class is for writers looking for innovative techniques to sharpen their travel writing. All levels are welcome, whether you have a stack of unshaped trip notes, a draft that has stalled, or a journey still ahead of you. The focus is Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" and how to bring that structure into first-person travel narratives.

What to expect:

Most travel writing fails for a structural reason rather than a stylistic one: the events are strung together in the order they happened, and the reader never learns why any of it mattered. In this one-day online seminar, you'll learn to see your travel experiences through the lens of "The Hero's Journey," the sequence Joseph Campbell identified while analyzing myths and stories across cultures. The structure is familiar territory in fiction and far less applied to nonfiction, which is exactly what makes it a useful tool for travel writers.

Cristina will open with an overview of the journey's elements and Campbell's own commentary on them, then move into close analysis of three published pieces, including one of her own. Together the class will trace how skilled writers move a first-person narrator through departure, ordeal, and return, and where the transformation actually lands on the page. You'll see the technique working in a magazine feature, an award-anthologized essay, and a classic of American travel literature.

The final stretch of the seminar turns to your own material. Cristina's teaching philosophy is collaborative, and this creative writing workshop is built for participation: you'll identify a trip you want to write about, sketch an outline that maps your material onto the structure, and draft opening sentences. Volunteers can share existing drafts for group analysis. Not every travel piece can carry this shape — service features and roundups generally can't — so you'll also leave knowing when to reach for it and when not to. The techniques carry over into fiction and memoir as well, making this a genuinely useful session for any writer working in narrative.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will identify a trip they want to write about and develop a working outline that maps their material onto the elements of "The Hero's Journey," giving them a repeatable format to use when they draft the full article or build a pitch for an editor. Students arriving with existing notes or a draft in progress can volunteer that work for group analysis, and Cristina will walk the class through how the structure might reshape it. Roughly fifteen minutes of the seminar is reserved for live outlining and drafting opening sentences. Feedback is verbal and delivered during the live session; there is no written or marked-up feedback for this seminar.

Readings may include excerpts from:

• "Canada's Denali Dupe Is Now Open to Adventurous Travelers" by Cristina Slattery, Azure Road
• "These Brazilians Traveled 18 Hours on a Riverboat to Vote. I Went with Them." by Shannon Sims, Pacific Standard, collected in The Best American Travel Writing 2019, edited by Alexandra Fuller
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson, Chapter 2
• A reference sheet on the elements of "The Hero's Journey," including Joseph Campbell's own comments on specific elements, provided by the instructor prior to the seminar

COURSE OUTLINE

Part One: The Hero's Journey, Defined — An overview of the structure and its individual elements, drawing on Joseph Campbell's descriptions, followed by open discussion. Students who want to read further will leave with recommendations from Campbell's work.

Part Two: The Structure in Practice — Close analysis of three assigned pieces: Cristina's own Yukon article, Shannon Sims's essay on riverboat voters in Brazil, and Bill Bryson's account of returning to Iowa. The class will examine how each writer handles transformation in a first-person frame.

Part Three: Your Trip on the Page — Discussion of students' own work, ideas, and upcoming trips, with attention to how the elements might shape a potential article or pitch. Fifteen minutes are set aside for outlining and drafting initial sentences, and volunteers can share what they've written for group response.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• A working command of "The Hero's Journey" and its individual elements, plus Campbell's own commentary on how they function
• An outline for a travel piece of your own, mapped onto the structure and ready to draft from
• A clear sense of which travel narratives suit this structure and which don't
• Sharper instincts for noticing narrative shape while you're still traveling, before the writing begins
• Analytical tools drawn from three published pieces that you can apply to any first-person narrative, in nonfiction or fiction
• A stronger foundation for pitching editors, with structure working in your favor

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $99 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

• Instructor: Cristina Slattery
• Begins Sunday, December 6th, 2026
• Class will meet once via Zoom on Sunday, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM ET
• Tuition is $99 USD.