In addition to my regular creative nonfiction classes at the Paris American Academy this summer, I will also be teaching a two-week course in travel writing at the Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia from June 17th through the 30th.

Since this program has in past years featured instruction from writers such as Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Phillip Lopate, Vivian Gornick, George Saunders, and Jim Shepard, I’m thrilled to be a part of the lineup. The 2007 faculty includes writers such as Jarhead author Anthony Swofford, Absurdistan author Gary Shteyngart, and Kevin Canty, who wrote A Stranger in This World (among other books). Thomas Swick will be teaching the other travel-writing workshop.

According the SLS website, the program

…is premised on the not-so-novel idea that one’s writing can greatly benefit from the keen sense of temporary displacement created by an immersion in a thoroughly foreign culture; that removing oneself from the routine context of one’s life…provides a creative jolt by offering up a wholly new angle of looking at the customary and the mundane.

Students generally enroll in one morning seminar and one afternoon seminar as their core classes for the two- or four-week session. The seminars meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. In addition there are lectures on Russian Literature and Culture as well as other writing-themed lectures each Tuesday and Thursday. These constitute the primary academic portion of the program. There are also twice-weekly readings, roundtable discussions and tours of the city and its outlying areas.

For more information, visit the SLS St. Petersburg website here.