My favorite professor in college taught a Travel Writing class. I was obsessed with traveling, but I worried that I hadn’t traveled anywhere worth writing about. One of my classmates had spent the past several years circumnavigating the world in…
The 15 Best Books I Read in 2023
2023 was a strange year for reading. I spent more time writing than reading, but then I’d feel sudden reading withdrawals and scramble to binge short audio books. (Yes, audio books count!) I read 80 books in 2023, but I…
2023 Recap, A Year of Recalibrating
2023 was a year of recalibrating. I came home from Europe in mid-December of 2022 with no job, no savings left, and no plans. What I had instead was 50,000 messy words of a fiction manuscript and months’ worth of…
An Unwelcome Home and the Most Dangerous Country of My Trip
We caught the earliest train out of Strasbourg before 5:00am. It took us straight to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris through a high-speed tunnel that I didn’t know existed. I cried in the airport, both because I was terrified…
Returning to Strasbourg, France, and the Most Magical Christmas Markets in Europe
We woke up before the sun rose on St. Nicholas Day to catch our 5:45am train in Salzburg. Our flight home to the United States was leaving from Paris the next morning. Paris was an 8.5-hour train ride away, so…
Salzburg, Austria, and Krampus Night—the Weirdest and Best Event of European Christmas
When planning my trip, I originally intended to fly home with my mom on December 4th or 5th—dates we’d picked to minimize the amount of work she had to miss. But then I learned about Krampus. I told my mom…
