Literary Exploring

When my wife and I were in Alsace in 2001, Thomas E. Kennedy suggested that we spend a few days in Paris on our way back to the States. He would also stop there on his way back from a business trip to Malta and arrange a gathering of expatriate American and Canadian writers at the outdoor tables of a cafe on Place de la Contrescarpe. He assembled an impressive crowd of poets, story writers, and novelists. Photos were taken, many of them, and Tom soon afterwards wrote an essay about the experience. That was the start of what is now called The Literary Explorer on Web Del Sol, a combination of prose and pictures.
     The series was Tom's idea, and I had my doubts that I could keep up with him. For close to thirty years he has lived in Copenhagen and traveled widely for business and pleasure, always carrying a camera and gravitating to sites of literary interest. Although I became addicted to European travel during my first semester-long stay in England, my trips averaged one a year for a week or two. But I had my own photos and my memory conjured up experiences to write about.
     Writing about our travels we deliberately avoided the typical guidebook approaches, emphasizing our own engagements with the places and the legacy of the writers who had lived there, often telling about the offbeat and little noticed.
     The Del Sol Press book collects the first 26 essays, but since that publication, we've added many more to the website, finding that we still have a number of past trips to catch up on and seeking essay possibilities when we plan new ones. Fortunately for us, the world offers endless opportunities for literary explorations.