The Reading Room
Reading lists, trip reports, and the occasional essay on why literary travel matters.
Irish-American Heritage Month
Six Irish and Irish-American novels that will make you want to book a flight to County Clare, Dublin, or Wexford — and never leave. Plus: a note about our September 2027 retreat in The Burren.
Heritage Travel
Not every novelist starts in a famous archive. Some start with a grandmother's story and a courthouse record. Family memory is legitimate historical research — and heritage travel is how you go deeper.
Research in Practice
Two former journalists turned novelists. One shared conviction: go to the source, ask the awkward questions, and never trust the secondhand account. Gregory and Brooks treat historical fiction as investigative work.
Research in Practice
Tracy Chevalier doesn't just visit her settings — she hikes them, stitches them, walks their beaches at low tide. It's the closest thing fiction has to method acting, and it changes everything she writes.
Research in Practice
Doerr thought he was looking at a medieval town. His editor told him it was destroyed by American bombs in 1944. That collision between appearance and history became the seed of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
About
I've been a reader since before I could reach the library counter. That reading made me want to see the world. The world made me want to plan trips for other people who feel the same way.
Research in Practice
The best historical fiction writers all did the same thing: they showed up. This series explores what happened when they did — and what it means for writers planning their own research trips.
Literary Travel
Some people collect passport stamps. Some collect first editions. This is the trip for people who collect both — a pilgrimage to the libraries that changed what it means to keep a book.
Heritage Travel
Everyone tells you to prepare your documents before a genealogy trip. Nobody tells you to prepare your heart. Here's what the emotional reality of standing in your ancestor's world actually feels like — and how to make space for it.
Book Club Travel
Here's how to plan a trip that follows a book's geography — visiting the real locations behind the fiction and discovering what the author found when they did their own research.
Book Club Travel
Your book club already discusses settings, characters, and themes. What if your next meeting happened inside the world of the book? Literary travel is one of the fastest-growing travel trends — and book clubs are perfectly positioned for it.
Heritage Travel
Census records tell you more than names and dates — they contain addresses, occupations, and neighbors. Here's how to turn those details into a map that will transform your understanding of your ancestors' daily lives — and guide your next trip.
Heritage Travel
The biggest mistake genealogy travelers make is booking the flight before doing the homework. Here's what to prepare before you go so you don't waste your limited time — or miss the discoveries waiting for you.
Research in Practice
Writers often think research travel means international flights and foreign archives. But some of the richest research trips are a few hours from home. Here's why domestic research travel deserves the same intentional planning as a trip overseas.
Research in Practice
You can learn almost everything about a place without leaving your desk. Almost. Here's what's missing — and why the gap between "almost everything" and "everything" is where your writing lives or dies.
Heritage Travel
Heritage travel and genealogy travel get used interchangeably, but they're different experiences that require different planning. One immerses you in culture; the other sends you into archives. Here's how to figure out which trip you need.
Research Travel Planning
The best research trips don't happen by accident. Here's a step-by-step approach to planning a research trip that actually serves your writing — from identifying what you need to find to building an itinerary around the right questions.
Research Travel Planning
Hilary Mantel mapped every character's location by date. Maggie O'Farrell walked a path and discovered a missing memorial. The novels you love were shaped by real places — and you can visit them.
Research Travel Planning
Research travel is travel with a question at its center — a trip built around something you're trying to understand, not just somewhere you want to go. Here's what that means and why it changes everything.
Research Travel Planning
A mystery novelist used a 1929 Baedeker guidebook to retrace her character's steps through Weimar Berlin. Here's what her journey reveals about research travel.
Research Travel Planning
The notes you take during research travel are only useful if you can find them later—and if they capture what words alone can't. A system for notes that serve the writing.
Research Travel Planning
Research travel requires different packing than vacation travel. What to bring, what to leave, and how to prepare for the work of paying attention.
Destination Guides
A research guide to Edinburgh for writers. Beyond the Royal Mile and castle views—how to find the city's literary layers, hidden archives, and neighborhoods that reward slow attention."
Research Travel Planning
You could plan your research trip yourself. Here's what a travel advisor offers that Google can't—and when working with one makes sense for writers.
Research Travel Planning
Before you book your research trip, work through these 10 questions. Your answers will shape your itinerary, budget, and what you'll actually accomplish.
Research Travel Planning
Research travel is an investment in your work. Learn how to budget realistically, find flexibility, and make research trips achievable on a writer's budget.
Destination Guides
A research guide to North Yorkshire for writers. From Victorian Harrogate to medieval market towns, moorland landscapes, and working farms—how to study a place rather than just visit it. Based on three years of lived experience in the region.
Research in Practice
Destination isn’t the point of research travel. It’s the method that shapes how writers observe, think, and write.
Research in Practice
Creative research is inquiry shaped by curiosity, not checklists. It's discovering what you didn't know you needed to know—and sometimes that kind of discovery can't happen at your desk.
Trip Design
This family itinerary through Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island blends downtime, private tours, volcanoes, and an unforgettable night snorkeling with manta rays—designed to meet older teens where they are.
Trip Design
This cross-border group journey moved by rail from Singapore through Malaysia to Thailand, blending strategic stops, cultural moments, and a gradual shift from city energy to mountain stillness.
Trip Design
A six-day Croatia journey designed for eight friends: guided caving, private sea kayaking, island camping, and shared meals—planned to feel effortless, grounded, and deeply memorable.
Research in Practice
Travel becomes research when you slow down long enough to understand how a place works, not just what it looks like.
Services
Not every writer needs the same kind of travel. How to choose between individual and group Field Studies based on how you learn best.
Services
Writing retreats center productivity. Field Studies center attention. Why we designed something different for writers who want depth, not word counts.
Services
Research travel planning shaped around your project, your pace, and how you work. What's included and who it's for.
Research Travel Planning
Census records told me where my grandmother lived. Walking the neighborhood told me what it meant. This is the story of researching a novel about my grandmother's life in 1930s Knoxville — and why I had to go there to write it.
Trip announcements, curated reading lists, and the occasional dispatch — before anyone else.