Travel Writers & Photographers Conference

The Premier Conference in the World for Travel Writers and Photographers!

The Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference has an extraordinary, international reputation among publishers, editors, and writers. Now in its 21st year, this four-day Conference offers an array of writing and photography workshops in the morning, a full afternoon of panels and discussions, and evening faculty presentations. There are optional, working field trips to explore the resources of the Bay Area. The faculty includes publishers, magazine editors, photographers, travel essayists, food writers, restauranteurs, guidebook writers, and more. There are hours of informal interaction between faculty and participants during lunch and in discussions that often last late into the evening.

Press Coverage of the Conference

• Don George on the 20th Annual Conference
• The Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference Turns 20
  
• Everett Potter Interviews Conference Chair Don George
  
• The Huffington Post on the Travel Writers and Photographers Conference

• Alumna Diane Susan Petty recently had four articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the latest being 5 Places: Hideouts for mobster madness. 
  
  
• Alumna Kristin Zibell recently had success with two stories that she workshopped at the 2011 conference:  "Color within the Lines," a story about finding compassion through volunteering in Kolkata will be published in the Bay Area Travel Writer's Anthology. Her other story "Letting Go on the Ganges" won a SOLAS award from Traveler's Tales in the Travel and Healing category.
  
  
• Conference alumna Janis Cooke Newman recently had a piece on Sicily published in the New York Times! In Sicily, a Step Back in Time (The New York Times, September 26, 2010)

• Conference alumna April Orcutt wrote to us to let us know about her recent publications:
  
  
  • San Francisco Chronicle (July 11, 2010)
    Lead: “Chasing the Moon’s Shadow” (online title: "Couple Crosses the World Chasing Solar Eclipses")
  • Philadelphia Inquirer (June 20, 2010)
    Lead: "Eclipse Ecstasy"  (online title: "Total Eclipse Reveals a World Seldom Seen")
  • Travel+Leisure Online (June 1, 2010)
    “America’s Best Beach Boardwalks” (includes 11 slides)
  • The Today Show on NBC/MSNBC (June 23, 2010)
    The Today Show adapted April's Travel+Leisure Online story “America’s Best Beach Boardwalks” for the television show
  • Los Angeles Times Online (Feb. 14, 2010)
    "Snuggle Up to a Place Called Heart Lake"
    

What People Are Saying

"The owners of Book Passage, Elaine and Bill Petrocelli, and events coordinator Kathryn Petrocelli, hosted us [Bay Area Travel Writers (BATW)] in the main events area of their superb bookstore, which you probably know is the home of internationally acclaimed Travel Writers and Photographers annual August Conference. Try and participate in this event if you have not yet done so."
- Diane LeBow, President emerita, Bay Area Travel Writers, Inc.

"I attended the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference back in 2001. I placed second in the photographer's contest. Since then I have released an adventure book which Book Passage has carried, Bulldust in my Bra: An American Couple's Working Season in the Outback. I'm about to release the second children's book in a series of ag educational books. It is being promoted nationwide."
– Rebecca Long Chaney

"Thank you so much for putting together such a special conference. It was educational, enriching and fortifying to my mind and spirit. I hope to make it again next year."
– Lila Martin 

"Coming to the Conference for the first time this year [2005] I was struck not just by the talent and passion (which are the norm at writing workshops) but by the friendliness and lack of pretentiousness (which aren't). Everyone—students as well as faculty—seemed well-read, well-travelled, curious, engaged, open. If good Americans go to Paris when they die, good American travel writers go to Corte Madera."
–Thomas Swick, Travel Editor, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Before signing up for the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, I had never published a travel article. After soaking up information from the conference faculty, I went home and applied what I'd learned. Thanks to Book Passage, I've written more than 100 articles and 2 travel memoirs, one of which became a bestseller."
– Elliot Hester, Syndicated Columnist, Author of Plane Insanity and Adventures of a Continental Drifter

"Don George, John Flinn, Larry Habegger, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Lynn Ferrin, Robert Holmes and other instructors at the Conference taught me skills I used in my stories and photographs which have been published in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Denver Post, Montreal Gazette, other newspapers and three anthologies (including the cover photos of one book). But even if I had never sold a story, the Conference was great fun, and I made friendships that will last a lifetime."
– April Orcutt, Travel Writer