Whenever people ask me what my favorite destinations are, I have to fudge the answer. The truth is I'd rather go somewhere new than revisit a place, and every destination is as unique as a fingerprint, with its own pleasures and disappointments.
But even though I go to many travel conferences in the course of a year, there's only one I look forward to all year: the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California, just outside San Francisco.
What makes it special? Cliché as this may sound, it's the people, from the luminaries who have taught here over the years (Isabel Allende, Susan Orlean, movie-star-turned-travel-writer Andrew McCarthy, Pico Iyer) to in-the-trenches travel legends like Don George (formerly of Lonely Planet), Christopher Reynolds (of the L.A. Times) and Tim Cahill (a founder of Outside magazine), to the whip-smart students who attend.
Somehow, over the course of 4 short days, we all learn a full semester's worth of techniques and strategies from one another, and just as importantly, we become a community.
What I hear most from first-timers at Book Passage is that they feel like they've finally found their "tribe."
This year, Phil Cousineau, PBS Host and author of the seminal book The Art of Pilgrimage will be on the roster, along Bloomberg Travel's Lebawit Lily Girma, Sierra magazine's Jonathan Hahn, and such iconic travel photographers as Robert Holmes and Catharine Karnow, among many others.
Oh yeah, and I'll be there, too, giving a behind-the-scenes look, with Lonely Planet's Celeste Brash, of what it takes to put out guidebooks, podcasts, and savvy travel writing.
Won't you join us?
The conference takes place August 8–11, 2024. To learn more, click here.
