Event – Detail

During 2026, the year of America's 250th birthday, Philadelphia became a popular travel destination for visitors around the globe, a situation that carries the potential to evokes age-old tensions between locals and visitors. In this three-hour workshop for fiction and non-fiction writers alike, participants are asked to think critically about the positive and negative effects that tourism has on the places we hold dear.

David writes, "Creative prompts will focus on questions like: What happens to your sense of place "when the whole country shows up" in your front yard? How is your relation to place altered by those who merely exist to consume the "experience of visitation"? Are you comfortable lending your favorite places to strangers who are just passing through, or do you feel put-out by the stampede of Hokas, disenfranchised from your daily haunts? For context, I will discuss the recent surge of anti-tourism sentiment in some European countries, and relay a personal story about one of my most beloved spots: Lily Park in Ventnor, NJ, once a dog-turdy plot of sand and weeds that has since become a vista from the social media craze of amateur sunset photography."

David Amadio received his MFA in Fiction from Bowling Green State University in 2001. Since 2004, he has taught Creative Writing and Composition at Lincoln University, America’s oldest degree-granting HBCU. His work has appeared in Talking River, Nerve Cowboy, Cleaver, Packingtown Review, Adaptation, and The San Francisco Examiner. Additionally, David is head writer of The Minor Prophets, a three-man comedy troupe with over 30 award-winning short films to its credit. A TEDx speaker and author of the novel Rug Man, winner of the 2024 Athenaeum Literary Award, David lives in that swath of suburban Philadelphia known as Delco.

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