The New York Times Travel Show
Friday January 24 to Sunday January 26, 2020 the New York Times Travel Show returns to the Javits Convention Center in New York City on the West Side Highway. This is the most important travel show in North America. I will be doing several talks on the Middle East, LGBTQ Travel, Argentina and other topics.
PLEASE NOTE: This is a change in time from my last newsletter when it was originally scheduled 4:15 pm to 5:15 pm.
Focus on the Middle East
Friday, January 24, 2020 from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
https://nyttravelshow.com/travel-professionals/
After my panel, I will moderate an Abu Dhabi event from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm.
Saturday, January 25, I will do several talks.
Argentina from 1pm to 1:45pm
Middle East from 2pm to 2:45pm
I expect to be milling around Sunday January 26 too, so if you're there, I am sure we will see each other!
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Shanghai Photo Lecture at Queens Public Library, Flushing, Queens, New York
Monday, January 27, 2020 - 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Flushing Queens Public Library, New York
41-17 Main Street
Flushing, NY 11355
(718) 661-1200
*IRC Conference Room*
On the Monday after the New York Times Travel Show in late January, I will cross the East River to Queens to speak and show images from my semester in Shanghai. The talk is called Seeing the World's Largest City: Shanghai, China. This lecture touches on the dynamic youth of today's China and the neighborhoods of Shanghai from the former French Concession to the Art-Deco Bund to Hongkou's Jewish Ghetto to the soaring skyscrapers of the Pudong District along with what it's like to be in Shanghai for Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival.
If you recall, this event had to be cancelled this time last year because of broken pipes in the Flushing Library - no flushing in Flushing!
If you're not familiar with Flushing, Queens - this is America's largest Chinatown, but it is virtually unknown to anyone outside of New York or not of Chinese heritage. It's worth exploring if you come to New York, and much larger than the better known Canal Street area of Manhattan, considered the main Chinatown. The trip can take as long as 40 minutes from midtown Manhattan on the 7 train. Long Island Railroad also stops here.
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UCLA Online Writing Professor - Personal Essay I
Now that I am home in New York, I am teaching online for the University of California, Los Angeles, through the Extension program. The course I am teaching is Personal Essay I. In some ways, it's like coming home as I took UCLA Extension screenwriting classes during my summers as an undergraduate.
More about my role with UCLA, which I began in late 2018 is here:
If you would like to register for my class, or know someone who is interested, the link is below. The next 10 week course runs from April 8 to June 16, 2020.
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Public Speaking Opportunities
I frequently speak on a global basis on a variety of topics at universities, libraries and other institutions.
If you'd like to book me for a speaking engagement on travel, LGBTQ issues, human rights, travel writing, war and conflict and other topics, including many geographic regions of the world, any of my 16 books which are primarily on travel, as well as my novel The Voyeur, please send me a note at mtluongo@gmail.com or mtluongo@umich.edu.
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Recent Articles:
Now that I am home from teaching in Hong Kong, I have been catching up with my freelancing. I have had a few more articles in the New York Times since my last newsletter, as well as my first article published in the Wall Street Journal. That article was on Bruce Springsteen, who is from the same town in New Jersey I grew up in, Freehold. In addition, I wrote a travel piece for The Guardian also on Freehold. You can go home again, and when you do, you should write about it!
New York Times: Wedding Photography Collides With 'Ruin Porn'
This article examines the trend of getting married or having wedding photos done in ruined structures - it came out of my time living in Michigan and visiting Detroit, where tens of thousands of abandoned structures exist throughout the city. The piece is also a look at how through a de-industrialized America many spaces are reimagined, while also examining issues of gentrification, racial displacement, and other social issues. The haunting nature of the piece made it perfect to publish on the Styles section website for Halloween. (And don't worry about the title, it's Safe For Work!)
New York Times: Screens in the Classroom: Tool or Temptation?
Intriguingly this article came out of my time teaching for the University of Michigan in both Ann Arbor and in Shanghai. In Ann Arbor, we had a strict rule about no tech in the classroom in the English Department. In Shanghai, it was a free for all of screens. At first I thought it was a terrible distraction until I realized my students were looking up translations and other information during my lecture. The article looks at colleges in the USA, focusing on children of immigrants, special needs students and others where screens help even if at times they can cause students to wander.
The Guardian: My Hometown: exploring Bruce Springsteen's New Jersey roots
With the Monmouth County Historical Association's launch of a Bruce Springsteen exhibit as the hook, I take a look at other things to visit in Freehold, New Jersey, from colonial history like Molly Pitcher to the Sabrina the Teenage Witch house, along with personal anecdotes from my own Freehold High School experience - the same alma mater as Bruce himself. I have long wanted to write a travel piece on Freehold, and I got the chance.
Wall Street Journal: Bruce Springsteen Exhibit Is a Town's Claim to His Legacy
Freehold, New Jersey, My Hometown as well as The Boss's. This article looks at the Monmouth County Historical Association's launch of a Bruce Springsteen exhibit, examining how the town impacted his music, as well as other areas of the Northern Jersey Shore region closest to New York City. This is my first time published in the Wall Street Journal, though I had written for them a long time ago, with a travel article killed in the Murdoch buyout process.
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From Last Newsletter: Lingnan University English Department
Writer-in-Residence in Hong Kong, China
With Hong Kong still in the news, I figured I would keep some details in this newsletter from last time, after I had spent a year teaching in this vibrant city.
If there is one thing that the protests are showing, it is the fear that young people have in Hong Kong of their future, something I became keenly aware of in my position as Writer-in-Residence at Lingnan University. Students fear the kinds of jobs they will have, whether economic prosperity can continue in Hong Kong, and if they can afford housing.
Most of all, as things change in Hong Kong, they fear losing freedom of expression, they fear the ability to write and say the things they want to tell the world.
In short, they fear communism, though no one seems to want to make that statement directly. Importantly, Hong Kong was never allowed to determine its own path as most former colonies across the globe have been allowed to do. I have pitched articles and op-eds on this topic, but not gotten anywhere with any of the editors with whom I have spoken, but it is a very important topic for all of us to think about when watching the news in Hong Kong. If you do not allow a people to choose their destiny, this is what can come as a result.
I came to Hong Kong at a time of increasing restriction on media - the government essentially threw Victor Mallet, the reporter for the Financial Times, out of the country for moderating a panel they did not agree with and also at first banned the writer Ma Jian, who is banned in Mainland China, from doing a talk in Hong Kong (they relented under pressure). These were among many other attacks on free speech in Hong Kong. It was clear I would be teaching journalism and creative writing in a place whose government no longer wants to allow such things to occur.
It was under those conditions I also guided my students in creating the Lingnan University Literary Journal, the Bauhinia Rhapsody.
If you want to get into the minds of young Hong Kong people and understand their fears for the future, this body of literature my students created will help you.
You can access a PDF version of their work here:
Please make sure also to read my Letter from the Editor, highlighting what it was like to teach there.
From essays on what it means to be a Hong Konger, and to be of different identities, or to be an exchange student in a changing Hong Kong, as well as photo essays, illustrations and more, these are some of the works my students, and other students at one Asia's most important liberal arts universities created. I hope it helps you understand at least a little what is in the news today.
Additionally, my role also meant being a part of the larger creative writing and journalism world of Hong Kong, and that meant creating programming aimed at protecting and promoting freedom of expression and the free press in Hong Kong, despite what the government would like. At Lingnan, on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, I hosted the only university forum in all of Hong Kong on the subject. The event was held with participation of Emily Lau of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, Chris Yeung of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Ilaria Maria Sala of PEN Hong Kong, Harvey Sernovitz of the US Consulate General of Hong Kong and Macau, and Cedric Alviani of Reporters Without Borders.
You can read more about the event here:
Unfortunately, and well, one has to wonder why, the several links we placed on Youtube for the video recording for it are gone now. I will have to try to find a recording again and upload it.
Before I left Hong Kong, the University's Touch magazine interviewed me about my thoughts on my year there. That article is here:
https://www.ln.edu.hk/lingnan-touch/90/writer-in-residence-draws-on-extensive-travel-experience-to-inspire-students
In case you missed it, I had also posted my December Writer-in-Residence Speech, explaining my journey as a writer and journalist to students and faculty. The talk covered childhood, college, my freelancing beginnings and novel writing, to my time in Ground Zero on a cleanup crew which vastly transformed my life, to traveling to cover war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, to meeting famous people around the world, from Pope Francis to Donald Trump. It was a journey through 100 countries and all seven continents.
The goal was to make real and demystify the process of becoming a writer for students. Too often the process is esoteric, and the real hard work and heartbreak behind it is often ignored by writers in their speeches to university students. That was far from my objective with this speech.
You can see a video of the talk, entitled, "Meeting Popes, presidents and princesses: a cross-continental life of writing, glamour and adventure," by clicking on this link:
Photos from the lecture are here:
I will likely be back in Hong Kong in March to run some writing workshops at Lingnan again.
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