Heather Strickland, a current senior at the University of Richmond in Virginia, has been published in Italy from a Backpack. This book is the latest in a series created for students traveling and living abroad.

Strickland’s short story on discovering Pompeii was written as a creative writing class assignment at the Umbra Institute in Fall 2005. The course, Creative Writing: Italy of the Imagination, is offered regularly at the Institute and taught by Cindy Clough, Ph.D.

From the editor: “While guidebooks are useful, telling us where to go and what to do, stories about what people experienced are powerful. The better they’re told, the more we feel as if we are participating in them ourselves. Accompanying Heather Strickland in “Not As Seen on TV,” we are told that no guidebook could have revealed Pompeii to her the way discovering it on her own did.”

“The people we meet in these stories live in a state of peace. They are generous, curious and welcoming, and we can happily interact with them through the magic of our travelers’ stories. These stories provide little oases in a crowded and fast-paced world. For us co-editors, they re-awaken urges to travel every time we read them.”