To Write is to Observe: Learning This Again on a Trip to Turkey

To Write is to Observe: Learning This Again on a Trip to Turkey

In Mid-May, I took a trip to Turkey with 11 women writers. Susan Bono and I gathered participants who met together for four days of touring Istanbul. Our Turkish counterpart, writer and teacher Yesim Cimcoz and her student Fusun Centinel put together walking tours for us to historical sites and to neighborhoods.

Mornings we discussed assignments from Susan (the use of Ekphrasis, perfect for traveling in Istanbul) and from me (epistolary writing), and we came back to our hotel after touring, enriched and ready to write. It’s been a long time since I stayed up all night writing, but I did that in Turkey one of our nights there when what I’d started wouldn’t leave me alone (but certainly my body not being sure what time zone it was contributed to this stamina).

Touring Istanbul with fellow writers and then visiting the Ephesus region of Turkey near the Aegean helped all of us accomplish what artist and neuroscientist Beau Lotto claims

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