Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Where in the World Are You, Eva Holland?
by World Hum | 09.12.07 | 2:50 PM ET
The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: Eva Holland, a new contributor to the World Hum blog. Her response landed in our inbox last night.
World Hum: Where in the world are you?
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Yahoo! BuzzRick Steves to Speak on ‘Travel as a Political Act’
by Jim Benning | 09.12.07 | 11:07 AM ET
Europe travel guru Rick Steves will deliver a presentation at Seattle’s Town Hall Thursday night entitled “travel as a political act.” As he told the Seattle Times: “When I talk about travel as a political act I’m talking about how travel can change your perspective in a way that when you get home, all of a sudden you’re more difficult to con.” Steves was recently the subject of both a World Hum interview and a World Hum call for a Tijuana-Off.
Jack Shafer vs. New York Times Travel Coverage
by Julia Ross | 09.07.07 | 7:53 AM ET
Ouch. Slate’s media critic Jack Shafer took a swipe at conventional travel journalism yesterday, in a column that scolds the New York Times’s “Escapes” section for “lack of imagination” in running three stories on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula this summer. Shafer uses the example to launch a broader plea for more bite in travel writing.
In Los Angeles, Among the Stars
by Jim Benning | 07.31.07 | 2:22 PM ET
After reading that actress Drew Barrymore wanted to become a travel writer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick wrote a column suggesting he become her mentor. In fact, he thought he’d offer to do just that during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “But soon after that column appeared, I started to have second thoughts,” he confessed Sunday. “Now that I was in L.A. I wanted to find her and tell her to forget travel writing (no future) and ask if she’d give me acting lessons.”
R.I.P. Clem Lindenmayer, Travel Writer
by Jim Benning | 07.30.07 | 1:34 PM ET
We’d been following the search for Clem Lindenmayer since early June, when news spread that the Australian travel writer disappeared while hiking near Minya Konka in western China. Now, news media are reporting that the 47-year-old died on the mountain. His body was discovered by villagers July 19, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Few other details are available.
Al Gore, Are You Out to Destroy Travel Literature?
by Jim Benning | 07.17.07 | 10:46 AM ET
We know you’re out to save the planet, but have you given any thought to how your campaign to reduce emissions will affect travel literature? What’s that? You haven’t really considered it? Well writer Steve Coronella has. “[L]ately I’ve been wondering whether Al Gore has signaled the end of travel writing as we have come to know it,” Coronella writes in the Cape Cod Times. “Will the long-haul literary excursion become an indefensible extravagance in the face of global warming and the accompanying public outcry that we all need to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ to combat it?”
China’s Wulingyuan National Park: A Gasp at Every Twist and Turn
by Michael Yessis | 07.16.07 | 5:02 PM ET
Add Simon Winchester to the list of heavyweight writers recently filing stories from China. The New York Times has Winchester’s dispatch from Wulingyuan National Park. “This is central China,” he writes, “and a remote part of the mountains of northwestern Hunan province, until lately seldom visited and indeed until 50 years ago barely even settled.” The two main draws now: a two-mile, $200 million tunnel to ease access, and “one of the most remarkable geomorphological spectacles existing on our planet,” the sandstone pillars of Wulingyuan.
2007 Book Passage Travel Writers Conference
by Jim Benning | 07.09.07 | 12:24 PM ET
The annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California gets rave reviews. This year, it takes place Aug. 16-19 at its usual locale, Book Passage bookstore north of San Francisco. I’ll be on the faculty, along with a number of writers and editors whose names often appear on World Hum. Among them: Rolf Potts, Jeff Greenwald, Thomas Swick, John Flinn, Don George, Larry Bleiberg, Jen Leo, Larry Habegger and Michael Shapiro, who guest-blogged from the conference last year. The schedule is available online.
Q&A with Paul Kvinta: Travels With Rory Stewart in Afghanistan
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.07 | 10:40 AM ET
To report his inspired profile of Rory Stewart in the latest issue of National Geographic Adventure, Paul Kvinta ventured where few Western travelers are going these days: Kabul, Afghanistan. Stewart, the author of the books The Prince of the Marshes and The Places in Between, now leads a nongovernmental organization in Kabul called the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which is working to save the Old City. His exploits as a writer—“Places” is based on Stewart’s solo walk across Afghanistan—and, as Kvinta writes, his “significant clout and talents” have enabled him not only to help focus the world’s attention on Kabul, but put him in a position to affect real change in the country.
Greenland: The ‘World’s Largest and Loneliest Island’
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.07 | 9:14 AM ET
Not for much longer, perhaps. Air Greenland recently launched its first commercial flight from the U.S. to the self-governing Danish territory, which lures most of its relatively minuscule amount of visitors—55,000 last year—from Denmark. One of the few non-Danes to visit this year: USA Today’s Laura Bly, whose terrific story reveals a beautiful—take a look at her slideshow—and heartbreaking place, a land where climate change and social change are moving at a rapid pace.
Where’s the Love for Travel Magazines?
by David Farley | 06.28.07 | 8:05 AM ET
Jury: Laura Albert is a Fraud
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.07 | 3:48 PM ET
Sometime travel writer Laura Albert, who under the guise of JT LeRoy wrote two books and one infamous story about visiting Disneyland Paris, has been convicted of defrauding a film production company. Antidote International Films Inc. wanted to make a film based on the book “Sarah,” which was allegedly based on the real experiences of LeRoy—a person who never existed. Albert’s financial hit: $116,500. Her career hit: Still to be determined. Albert’s elaborate set-up—she wrote under the name JT LeRoy and another person portrayed him in public appearances—began unravelling in late 2005 when the New York Times, for whom she’d written her Disneyland Paris story and was reportedly going to visit Deadwood, South Dakota for a story, asked to see LeRoy’s passport and social security card.
Jan Morris’s Manhattan: ‘A Sentimental Old Body at Heart’
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.07 | 11:40 AM ET
For half a century, legendary travel writer Jan Morris has visited New York City at least once a year. On the occassion of her “demi-centennial celebration,” Morris takes stock of the city she loves and finds Manhattan to be the place it has always been. It has a physical consistency, sure. “[W]ith the possible exception of Venice,” she writes in a short essay in the Financial Times, “Manhattan retains its physical character more tenaciously than any other great city of the western world.” The city’s cultural consistency, however, draws most of her attention.
Search Continues for Lonely Planet Travel Writer
by Jim Benning | 06.22.07 | 11:30 AM ET
The search continues for Clem Lindenmayer, the 47-year-old Australian travel writer who disappeared last month while hiking near Minya Konka in western China. ChinaTrekking.com has been keeping close tabs on the search, posting news of sightings of Western hikers, but it has no conclusive reports of Lindenmayer sightings. Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree discussion is still active. JourneyEast.org, which notes an $800 reward for information leading to Lindenmayer, reports that his last e-mail was sent in early May from Kangding.
R.I.P. Colin Fletcher, ‘The Father of Modern-Day Backpacking’
by Jim Benning | 06.18.07 | 12:13 PM ET
The author and adventurer best known for his seminal backpacking guide The Complete Walker and his Grand Canyon narrative The Man Who Walked Through Time died last week at the age of 85. “The Complete Walker” was first published in 1968, and it was enormously influential in its day. Backpacker magazine editor in chief Jonathan Dorn told the Los Angeles Times: “He brought this idea that you didn’t have to be a nut case to take long solitary walks in the wilderness at a time when a lot of people were really looking for ways to create holistic lives and escape from the craziness of Vietnam and the stresses of the ‘60s.”
