All Student Success Letters

Emilio Dawson

Dear Gotham,
 
I am writing to say gracias for giving me the essential writing tools and encouragement that led me to create my travel blog website, EmilioDawsonTravels.
 
Last year, I enrolled in the online Travel Writing and Food Writing premium workshops, offered in collaboration with the New York Times Knowledge Network. For twenty-two consecutive weeks, I was busy with lectures, participating in lively discussions, writing weekly assignments, and exchanging feedback with a group of international students eager to learn how to write about their experiences in a structured, concise, and engaging way.
 
Once the courses ended, my mind was full of ideas about what to do next. Among the potential projects—creating a website to write about my travel adventures with my partner of almost twenty years. After six months of designing the website, writing content and choosing photographs, I went “live.”
 
I created this travel blog to reminisce about trips taken, describe things that made a lasting impression, and share the excitement of future travels. In addition to writing travel articles and posting photographs, I showcase photos of posters that made me reach out for the camera during my travels. For readers who enjoy travel memoirs, there is also a space dedicated to this type of intimate writing. “Enchanted by Isla Nena”was originally written for the Travel Writing course. The feedback I received truly made the final version a better piece.
 
As I wrote in my introduction “Trips, Snapshots & Journals,” I owe words of gratitude to my Gotham Writers’ Workshop instructors, Andrew Collins and Evan Rail, for their mentoring throughout the courses; my classmates for their candid critiques; and to Dan Salzstein and Kim Severson, editors of the New York Timesfor sharing their thoughts and experiences during their week-long Q&A.
 
Before I studied at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, I had a desire to write about my travel experiences, but I did not understand the full spectrum of travel and food writing. At Gotham, I learned the craft elements I can now use to write for people who share a similar passion.

Gracias Gotham. Because of you I gained the confidence to go from writing in my journal to creating a website where I share those experiences with the world.
 
Sincerely,
 
Jason Emilio Rodriguez,
aka Emilio Dawson
EmilioDawsonTravels.com