Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Rick Steves: ‘Happy Travels—Even to Tijuana’
by Jim Benning | 06.14.07 | 4:20 PM ET
Can you smell it, the sweet smell of success? Or at least the semi-sweet smell of partial success? Earlier this week, in our Speaker’s Corner section, I invited travel guru Rick Steves to a full-on, mano a mano Tijuana-Off after he suggested off-handedly that my favorite Mexican border city was a hellhole.
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Yahoo! BuzzHow Not to Panic When Your Circling Plane Runs Low on Fuel
by Jim Benning | 06.11.07 | 6:10 PM ET
The air traffic control system computer glitch that caused thousands of airline delays on the East Coast Friday also slowed down World Hum columnist Rolf Potts. He was aboard an AirTran flight from Atlanta to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport when the pilot announced a 20-minute delay. It would be the first of many announcements that day, and nearly eight hours would pass before Potts arrived in New York. I dialed him up today and asked him for a few gory details.
Lonely Planet Writer Missing in Tibet
by Jim Benning | 06.06.07 | 1:42 PM ET
According to various reports, including this post on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, 47-year-old Australian travel writer Clem Lindenmayer was expected back from a six-day solo backpacking trip in eastern Tibet nearly a month ago. He was last known to be trekking near Minya Konka mountain, which one Hong Kong-based magazine editor has called a “cutting-edge destination” attracting travelers “put off by the circus revolving around places like Mount Everest.” Lindenmayer is an experienced traveler. He speaks several languages, including Mandarin. His last book for Lonely Planet was Trekking in the Patagonian Andes, published in 2003.
Interview with Seal Press Founder Barbara Sjoholm
by 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.
‘Borat’ Inks Deal to Write Travel Guides to Kazakhstan, ‘U.S. and A.’
by Michael Yessis | 05.24.07 | 1:17 PM ET
“Borat,” aka Sacha Baron Cohen, will write two books in one, according to a Reuters story highlighting the deal. One part will be called “Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A.” The other title: “Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” The level of silliness should be off the charts. What I’d like to see, however, is this: a book about Borat’s travels to Phaic Tan or Molvania, all while carrying stuff he bought from SkyMaul. (via Gadling)
Related on World Hum:
* Borat and the ‘Real Kazakhstan’
And the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Travel Writing Goes to?
by Jim Benning | 04.16.07 | 4:31 PM ET
Nobody. The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded today, but of course, there’s no category for travel writing. Still, we’re delighted that LA Weekly food writer Jonathan Gold won the Pulitzer for criticism. That’s close enough, because Gold approaches Los Angeles restaurants with a traveler’s sensibility, venturing into hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants where few food critics dare to go, from Thai Town to Little Ethiopia. His 2000 book, Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, is probably a little dated by now, but it’s still a great guide for anyone seeking out the city’s most interesting food—and neighborhoods.
David Farley on Travel and Travel Writing
by Jim Benning | 03.31.07 | 1:17 PM ET
World Hum contributor David Farley talks travel writing and his quest for Jesus’s foreskin—seriously—in a fine podcast interview with Gadling’s Erik Olsen.
Related on World Hum:
* Q&A with David Farley and Jessie Sholl: A Passion for Prague
‘Ernest Hemingway on Writing’
by Jim Benning | 03.30.07 | 2:00 PM ET
Thomas Swick’s ‘Letter to a Young Travel Writer’
by Jim Benning | 03.27.07 | 4:41 PM ET
Specifically, to Drew Barrymore, who was once quoted as saying, “Screw Hollywood, I’m going to be a travel writer.” Travel writing would be perfect for the actress, Swick believes. Among other benefits, she’d escape the harsh glare of the media spotlight —travel writers, he notes, “are the writing world’s witness protection program”—and she wouldn’t have to memorize more scripts. “Though there’s one thing that’s not gonna be ANY different: people are still gonna think that what you’re doing isn’t really work,” Swick writes. “I know, it’s crazy, but that’s how people are.”
Related on World Hum:
* Thomas Swick on Travel Writing
He’s Not a Fan of Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Work
by Jim Benning | 03.21.07 | 12:39 PM ET
Binyavanga Wainaina explains why he believes the late Polish journalist and travel writer didn’t get Africa right, and how he inspired the satirical Granta essay, How to Write About Africa. (Via The Elegant Variation.)
Related on World Hum:
* Kapuscinski: ‘I Sometimes Call it Literature by Foot’
* Remembering Kapuscinski: ‘He Was a Deity’
Interview with ‘Tropophiliac’ Alexander Frater
by Michael Yessis | 03.20.07 | 7:33 AM ET
Alexander Frater, author of Tales From the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics and self-proclaimed tropophiliac—“a lover of warm, wet countries”—sat for an interview this week on the public radio show On Point. The Washington Times and The New York Times have raved about “Tales.” In the latter, William Grimes calls Frater a “genial tour guide and a stylish writer” who “makes excellent company.”
Tom Bissell: A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man
by Jim Benning | 03.16.07 | 3:00 PM ET
Fiction and travel writer Tom Bissell, author of the new book The Father of All Things, which is about his journey to Vietnam with his war-veteran father, once again gets the profile treatment, this time in Poets & Writers magazine. World Hum books editor Frank Bures wrote the piece about Bissell, who’s also a World Hum contributor. “I’ve been reading Tom’s stuff for a long time,” Bures told me. “He just seemed like a natural for a profile. His collection of short stories, ‘God Lives in St. Petersburg,’ is fantastic, and his stories keep showing up in ‘The Best American Travel Writing.’ But his own story is a great one—the kind that gives hope to other writers.”
The Travel Writer as Airport Screener: ‘I Feel Ridiculous’
by Jim Benning | 03.07.07 | 12:03 PM ET
Travel Writers Update
by Jim Benning | 03.02.07 | 3:19 PM ET
We interviewed travel editor Don George in January about his departure from Lonely Planet and the future of travel. George’s latest venture, he recently announced, is Don’s Place, which he describes as a “a multi-faceted blog sponsored by an enlightened association of ten first-class adventure travel companies called the Adventure Collection.” Meanwhile, Jen Leo—Written Road blogger, editor of several Travelers’ Tales books and also the subject of a World Hum interview—recently began writing the Daily Deal Blog at the revamped Los Angeles Times travel site. In the makeover, the paper killed its Postcards from Paris blog.
Bill Bryson: ‘When I Check into a Hotel Almost Never Do They Know Me’
by Jim Benning | 03.01.07 | 4:47 PM ET
Bill Bryson is arguably one of America’s most popular travel writers, yet few people recognize his name, he says, including hotel clerks. “You think they’d be a little more nervous to have a travel writer staying there,” he remarks in a profile in the New Zealand Herald. “I’ve always tried to go incognito, and it’s really not that hard to do.”
