Interview with Seal Press Founder Barbara Sjoholm

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 05.31.07 | 4:05 PM ET

Seal Press publishes loads of books featuring women’s travel writing—recent titles include Greece: A Love Story: Women Write About Their Greek Experience and The Risks of Sunbathing Topless: And Other Funny Stories from the Road. Gadling has posted an interview that Kelly Amabile did with the founder, Barbara Sjoholm. In addition to founding the company, Sjoholm is a novelist and the author the memoir Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer.

Sjoholm’s advice to beginning travel writers:

Learn to observe. Write down what things taste like, what they smell like. Write down conversations, incidents on the street, newspaper headlines, funny signs, weird menu items, misunderstandings, what it feels like to try/fail to speak another language. When I look back at early journals, I’m delighted when I find paragraphs of great description or the fragments of a conversation. Even if it’s not much, it can still jog your memory and provide an image or emotional snapshot you can use later to write a story or essay.