Thomas Swick

A Princeton Public Library event, “Thomas Swick: Trenton, Warsaw, and the Making of a Travel Writer,” will feature travel writer Thomas Swick on Monday, November 27 at 6 p.m. at the library. Swick will talk about history and self-discovery and sign copies of his new memoir, Falling into Place: A Story of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer.

Working as a feature writer in 1976, Swick fell in love with a visiting Polish student and soon moved with her to Warsaw. During the next decade he lived in Poland, Greece, and Philadelphia, and witnessed the changes in Poland, including the imposition of martial law. In 1989, he watched his partner in her country’s first free elections since pre-war independence.

Falling into Place (Rowman & Littlefield, $35) is the personal story of a young man’s discovery of the world and his development as a travel writer. It is also a love story of overcoming cultural differences, intertwined with the story of a revolution that altered history.

Formerly a feature writer for the Trenton Times, an editorial writer for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, and the travel editor for the Sun-Sentinel (Florida), Swick  is the author of Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler, and The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them. His essays and stories have appeared in The Wilson Quarterly, Oxford American, American Scholar, Missouri Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, Longreads, and Literary Hub.