Tag: Travel Writing
Paul Theroux Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers
by World Hum | 11.05.09 | 2:43 PM ET
"Leave home, travel alone, and stay on the ground"
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Yahoo! BuzzTravel Writer as Curator
by Rick Steves | 11.03.09 | 9:51 AM ET
On the state of newspapers and the role of tour guides and guidebook writers
Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for October
by @worldhum | 11.02.09 | 2:07 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are eight favorites from the past month.
World Hum Goes to the Travel Blog Exchange ‘10
by Michael Yessis | 11.02.09 | 12:12 PM ET
We’ll be communing with our fellow travel writers and bloggers in New York City June 26-27, 2010, at the second annual Travel Blog Exchange. Founder Kim Mance and her crew launched TBEX last July in Chicago with a memorable day of travel talk.
Next year, the event spans two days and World Hum, one of the event’s media partners, is on the organizing committee. We’re working with Kim and several others in the travel blog universe to help develop the event, and we’ll also be preaching the Travel Writing in the Digital Age gospel with a small taste of our new workshops. If you’ve got any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about what you’d like to see covered, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
V.S. Naipaul Mistakenly ‘Killed Off’ in FBI Footnote
by Eva Holland | 10.29.09 | 4:10 PM ET
The travel writer and novelist was mentioned in passing in an FBI court filing as “the late Lord V.S. Naipaul.” This is one detail that I’m glad to hear the Feds got wrong. (Via The Book Bench)
The Perfect Traveler
by Pico Iyer | 10.28.09 | 10:14 AM ET
He was cool, steady and prone to breaking rules. Pico Iyer celebrates the life and work of Somerset Maugham.
NYT Freelancer Gets the Axe
by Eva Holland | 10.27.09 | 10:17 AM ET
Last week’s “swag orgy” controversy has ground to a conclusion: Freelancer Mike Albo has had his shopping column cut by the New York Times after violating the paper’s ethics agreement. Weirdly, Gawker—the blog that helped force the Times’ hand—now apparently thinks the firing is too harsh.
I’ll give Mike Albo the last word once again. He told New York Magazine: “I look forward to trying on cashmere sweaters I can’t afford for other publications.”
Endless Travel Writing Ethics Debate Gets Gawkerized*
by Eva Holland | 10.22.09 | 12:12 PM ET
And here I thought only our little corner of the writing community cared about the ongoing press trip debate. Apparently not. Yesterday, Daily Finance outed New York Times contributor Mike Albo as a taker of press trips, describing Albo’s recent Jamaica junket as a “swag orgy.” Now Gawker’s gotten involved, too, pointing out to the Times’ higher-ups that one of their freelancers was in violation of their no-freebies policy. The Times has acknowledged that the paper has “concerns” about the trip.
As for Mike Albo? Here’s his latest tweet: “do you ever feel like you are a guppy who is being eaten by his mother?”
*Update 12:59 p.m. ET: We’re debating the issue on Twitter at #twethics.
Interview With Nicholas Kristof: Traveling and Tweeting Under ‘Half the Sky’
by David Frey | 10.21.09 | 10:53 AM ET
Photo by Fred R. Conrad David Frey asks the author about his dream vacation, Twitter, travel to hellholes and the trip that changed his life
Audio Interview With Peter Ferry: ‘Travel Writing’
by Jim Benning | 10.14.09 | 11:14 AM ET
Jim Benning asks the World Hum contributor about writing novels and non-fiction
Study Travel Writing in the Digital Age With World Hum
by World Hum | 10.13.09 | 9:29 AM ET
Introducing two-day workshops covering travel writing, travel blogging and dynamic audio slideshows
Lowell Thomas Award Winners Announced
by Eva Holland | 10.12.09 | 3:18 PM ET
The winners of this year’s Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards were announced over the weekend. Freelancer Joe Ray was named Travel Journalist of the Year and National Geographic Traveler took the gold in both the Magazine and Online Travel Journalism Site categories, while World Hum columnist Rolf Potts received a bronze award for his latest book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There. Congratulations to all the winners!
Alain de Botton: In Praise of Airline Food
by Eva Holland | 10.12.09 | 11:21 AM ET
In one of the dispatches resulting from his stint as Heathrow’s writer in residence, de Botton visits an airline food factory—and explains why he loves the much-maligned meals.
Naturally airline food is dismal when we compare it to what we’d get on the ground but this is to miss the point. The thrill of airline food lies in the interaction between the meal and the odd place in which one is eating it. Food that, if eaten in a kitchen, would have been banal or offensive, acquires a new taste in the presence of the clouds. With the in-flight tray, we make ourselves at home in an unhomely place: we appropriate the extraterrestrial skyscape with the help of a chilled bread roll and a plastic tray of potato salad.
Celebrating ‘The Best American Travel Writing’ in NYC
by Eva Holland | 10.09.09 | 2:49 PM ET
I made it to the launch party for The Best American Travel Writing 2009 last night at Manhattan’s Idlewild Books. Series editor Jason Wilson was there, along with this year’s guest editor, Simon Winchester—who read from what he described as his “preachy” introduction on the importance of teaching geography. (Preachy or not, I think it’s a point worth making.) Contributors Elisabeth Eaves, Matthew Power and Andre Aciman also read from their essays in the anthology, a few bottles of wine were emptied, and—if I can have a preachy moment of my own—it was nice to see, despite the ongoing litany of bad news, that a book of literary travel essays can still draw a crowd.
As for the anthology itself? I haven’t gotten deeply into it yet, but it looks like another good one. Regular World Hum contributors Frank Bures and Eric Weiner both have stories included, while four World Hum stories—from Katie Krueger, Julia Ross, Emily Stone and Jeffrey Tayler—are among this year’s additional notable selections.
‘The Best American Travel Writing’ in New York City
by Eva Holland | 10.06.09 | 9:49 AM ET
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 has landed in stores, and, for anyone in the New York area, there are a couple of upcoming events celebrating the release.
First up, Idlewild Books is hosting a launch party this Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m. Several contributors to the 2009 edition will be reading, including guest editor Simon Winchester and World Hum contributor Elisabeth Eaves. You can RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Later this month, there will be an installment of the Restless Legs Reading Series devoted to the anthology. It’ll take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21, at Lolita Bar—series editor Jason Wilson will host, and World Hum contributors Elisabeth Eaves, Tony Perrottet and Frank Bures will be reading.
I’ll be attending both and hope to see you there.
R.I.P. Gourmet
by Eva Holland | 10.05.09 | 4:02 PM ET
The 69-year-old magazine, which has published many fine foodie travel stories over the years, will be ceasing publication along with several other magazines cut this week at Conde Nast. Here’s just one travel classic from the Gourmet archives, David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster.
Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for September
by @worldhum | 10.02.09 | 12:04 PM ET
iStockPhoto What makes a good travel tweet? Here are eight favorites from the past month.
In Praise of ‘Hindoo Holiday’
by Michael Yessis | 10.01.09 | 1:56 PM ET
Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda professes his love for J.R. Ackerley’s book about his five months in India, Hindoo Holiday—both for its content and his quest to find it.
“I first read Hindoo Holiday 25 years ago because of [Evelyn] Waugh’s atypical rave, which I came across in the massive, and massively enjoyable, volume of his collected essays and journalism,” Dirda writes. “In those pre-Internet days it took a while to turn up a copy of Ackerley’s onetime best seller, and I can still remember my glee in finally unearthing that worn Chatto and Windus edition in Heffer’s bookstore during a short visit to Cambridge, England.”
Is Lying ‘Intrinsic to Travel Books’?
by Eva Holland | 09.24.09 | 1:55 PM ET
The Guardian’s John Hooper considers the impact of Google and the armchair fact-checker on the time-honored tradition of a little, er, exaggeration in travel writing.
William Dalrymple on Travel Writing, Past and Future
by Eva Holland | 09.21.09 | 4:02 PM ET
The author of “In Xanadu” and “City of Djinns”—which landed at number 16 on our list of the top 30 travel books—has a thoughtful, if fairly grim, essay in the Guardian on the changing state of travel writing. Dalrymple opens with the story of his visit, with Patrick Leigh Fermor, to the spot where Bruce Chatwin’s ashes had been scattered:
Inevitably, it was a melancholy visit. Not only were we there to honour the memory of the dead friend who had introduced us, but Leigh Fermor himself was not in great shape. At dinner that night, it was clear that the great writer and war hero, now in his mid-90s, was in very poor health. Over dinner we talked about how travel writing seemed to have faded from view since its great moment of acclaim in the late 1970s and 80s, when both Leigh Fermor and Chatwin had made their names and their reputations. It wasn’t just that publishers were not as receptive as they had once been to the genre, nor that the big bookshops had contracted their literary travel writing sections from prominent shelves at the front to little annexes at the back, usually lost under a great phalanx of Lonely Planet guidebooks. More seriously, and certainly more irreversibly, most of the great travel writers were either dead or dying.
He offers a little hope further in. The whole thing is worth reading.
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