Tag: Travel Writing

Jan Morris Reveals her Favorite Cities

She fields this question in the Guardian: What is her favorite of them all?

Dear God, what a question! To my mind cities are distillations of human life itself, in all its nuances, with all its contradictions and anomalies, changing from one year to another, changing with the weather, changing with history, changing with the state of the world, changing above all in one’s own personal responses. How can I have a favourite? Sometimes I prefer one city, sometimes another. Inconstancy governs my responses to cities—fidelity in personal matters, promiscuity in civic affairs.

Morris does have a ready answer, though, when asked about her least favorite city: Indianapolis. (Via @ben_coop)


Video: Rolf Potts on Travel Writing and ‘Picture Postcard Expectations’

The World Hum contributor in conversation with BootsnAll

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The New Yorker’s Food Issue Goes Traveling

The new issue has a definite global bent, with stories on China’s burgeoning wine culture, spending Thanksgiving abroad and more. Most of the stories aren’t accessible online for non-subscribers, but John Colapinto’s ride-along with a Michelin restaurant inspector is available in full. There’s also a podcast to accompany Calvin Trillin’s “kamikaze” poutine mission to Quebec, and a video to go along with the Chinese wine story.


On the ‘Easy Rider’ Trail, 40 Years Later

Keith Phipps followed Wyatt and Billy’s path from Southern California to the Gulf Coast, and the first part of his resulting multiday series for Slate ran yesterday. It looks to be a good one. Here’s a sample:

More an elegy for a generation that never got where it wanted to go than a celebration of that generation’s superiority, it pits hopefulness against resignation and sets the battle on a lovingly photographed stretch of the United States. Easy Rider hit theaters with a memorable tag line: “A man who went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” Star, producer, and co-writer Peter Fonda hated that line, and rightly so. It’s really the story of two men—Wyatt and Billy, played by Fonda and co-writer and director Dennis Hopper—who went looking for America and found it everywhere. They just didn’t find a place for themselves.

We paid tribute to the movie on its 40th anniversary this past summer.


Tim Cahill: At Home in Montana

The Wall Street Journal visits the veteran travel writer at a cabin in southwest Montana where he does most of his writing. Says Cahill: “It’s often hilarious to me that I’m writing about Tonga or some tropical place and there’s a blizzard outside and the cows are on their backs with their hooves in the air.”

For more about Tim Cahill’s writing process, check out his remarks on creating literate adventure stories. (Via @Gadling)


The Death of the Idyll

Frank Bures on "The Wisdom of Tuscany" and the last, dying gasp of a travel book genre

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Tim Cahill on Writing Literate Adventure Stories

"You don't need Superman to do an adventure story"

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Paul Theroux Gives Advice to Aspiring Writers

"Leave home, travel alone, and stay on the ground"

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Travel Writer as Curator

On the state of newspapers and the role of tour guides and guidebook writers

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Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for October

Eight Great Travel Twitter Tweets for October iStockPhoto

What makes a good travel tweet? Here are eight favorites from the past month.

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World Hum Goes to the Travel Blog Exchange ‘10

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

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

He was cool, steady and prone to breaking rules. Pico Iyer celebrates the life and work of Somerset Maugham.

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NYT Freelancer Gets the Axe

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*

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’

Nicholas Kristof 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

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Audio Interview With Peter Ferry: ‘Travel Writing’

Jim Benning asks the World Hum contributor about writing novels and non-fiction

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Study Travel Writing in the Digital Age With World Hum

Introducing two-day workshops covering travel writing, travel blogging and dynamic audio slideshows

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Lowell Thomas Award Winners Announced

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

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.