Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Travel Writers Pick Their Favorite Airports
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.06 | 2:09 PM ET
USA Today’s Jayne Clark asks a handful of travel writers about their favorite airports in today’s edition. Among them: The Naked Tourist author Lawrence Osborne, who notes about his favorite, Wamena, Irian Jaya, on the island of New Guinea, “It’s the anti-airport. It has almost no staff. There is no glass in the windows, just naked men in pig fat jumping up and down.” Hmmm. Could be worth a trip just to see that.
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Yahoo! BuzzKristof and Parks in Africa
by Michael Yessis | 09.20.06 | 7:46 AM ET
New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof and Casey Parks, the winner of the Win a Trip with Nick contest, are on the ground in Africa, reporting on their experiences via blog, vlog and column. (Unfortunately, it’s all currently behind the TimesSelect wall, though some of it will appear on mtvU in the future.) “I know I picked the right person for this trip, because her entries are actually more interesting than mine,” Kristof writes. “I’m delighted to be shown up!” Kristof isn’t in danger of losing his job, but he is onto something. Parks’ blog so far is a compelling mix of mundane things like music playlists, you-are-there descriptions and heartbreaking reportage and reflection.
BestTravelWriting.Com and the New Solas Awards
by Jim Benning | 09.12.06 | 1:10 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales has launched a series of new travel-writing awards and an accompanying Web site. The annual Solas Awards feature cash prizes. The site, BestTravelWriting.com, is “a lively new site for stories, gossip, news, and information about the world of travel writing,” in the words of TT. It features a weblog, awards submission details and a number of stories.
Mariane Pearl on Traveling the World with Her Son
by Jim Benning | 09.11.06 | 6:50 AM ET
Potts: “I’m Struck By How Much Travel Has Changed Since 1994”
by Michael Yessis | 08.29.06 | 8:06 AM ET
Twelve years ago Rolf Potts set out on his first long-term excursion, an eight-month road trip through the United States and Canada. “I navigated with paper maps, got my information from a single Let’s Go: USA guidebook, and met people at random,” he writes in his latest Yahoo! Traveling Light column. Now, with GPS and Lonely Planet on PlayStation Portable and CouchSurfing and TripAdvisor and more travel-planning information available online than anyone could possibly read, travel has evolved. But it’s not necessarily less “pure.”
Tom Haines: Reflections From an Interactive Journey Through New England
by Michael Yessis | 08.29.06 | 6:47 AM ET
Last week, we promised to check in with Boston Globe writer Tom Haines after he finished up his experiment with interactive travel writing. Upon his return home, I asked him a few questions via e-mail:
How did you like the interactive travel experience?
I enjoyed it—more of a conversation with readers than a monologue. This is perhaps obvious, but even something as simple as people suggesting where to go changed my perception of what I was doing. I was there at their suggestion, as though I were invited in, shepherded in, rather than making my own way. Beyond that, little else changed, in that once on the road, or in a place, I still made my focus that which I try to bring to all my travel writing: finding incidents and moments that speak to bigger situations, that give a new perspective on a place. Trying to show things in a way people may not otherwise see them.
The Science of Humor and Travel Writing
by Michael Shapiro | 08.24.06 | 6:53 PM ET
Editor’s note: Travel writer Michael Shapiro just attended the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California. He was on the conference faculty and is writing about the gathering for World Hum.
“There were vast distances between punch lines,” a Florida newspaper wrote about Tim Cahill’s address at last January’s Key West Literary Seminar. So Cahill wrote to this unkind reporter and informed him he had a speech impediment. Cahill even had friends write to the reporter and tell him the same thing. So the reporter published a letter of apology and Cahill wrote again to inform him of the nature of his impediment: he grew up in Wisconsin and speaks slowly. Cahill’s remarks came Sunday at Book Passage during the conference’s closing panel, “Humor and Travel Writing.” Rolf Potts once called Cahill “the most disheveled non-homeless person I’ve ever met.” During Sunday’s panel Cahill retorted: “How does he know I have a home?”
Making a Living as a Freelance Writer
by Michael Shapiro | 08.23.06 | 2:03 PM ET
Editor’s note: Travel writer Michael Shapiro just attended the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California. He was on the conference faculty and is writing about the gathering for World Hum.
It would be Mick Jagger’s dream job. Drew Barrymore would like to be one too. Both have said that if they could choose another profession, it would be travel writing. They’re not the only ones. About 140 aspiring travel writers and photographers packed Book Passage last week to learn the tools of the trade. Halfway through the four-day event, I joined a panel entitled “Making a Living as a Freelance Writer.”
Heading…
John Flinn on Telling the Travel Tale
by Michael Shapiro | 08.22.06 | 1:47 PM ET
Editor’s note: Travel writer Michael Shapiro just attended the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California. He was on the conference faculty and is writing about the gathering for World Hum.
One of the joys of teaching at the Book Passage Travel Writers Conference is the chance to drop in on classes during your downtime. On Saturday morning John Flinn invited me to visit his advanced travel writing class. Flinn is the executive travel editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a graduate of the University of Bill Bryson and Tim Cahill.
The Travels of Jiang Zemin
by Michael Yessis | 08.22.06 | 7:39 AM ET
Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin visited more than 70 countries during his 13-year rule, and he apparently chronicles a great deal of those trips in a 654-page travel book that came out recently. The book is called “For a Better World: Jiang Zemin’s Overseas Visits,” and according to an AP story, it’s more about Jiang’s “desire…to be remembered as the leader who presided over China’s rise to unprecedented importance in trade and global affairs” than his desire to be the next J. Maarten Troost. Via Gadling.
William T. Vollman on Hopping Trains
by Michael Yessis | 08.20.06 | 7:56 AM ET
In an interview in The Independent, William T. Vollman reveals that he’s working on a book about riding freight trains across the United States. The notoriously on-the-edge author tells Matt Thorne, “It’s really fun to think about the connections with the Beats, rereading Jack Kerouac, but also Jack London and Mark Twain, travelling fast through the country, that solitary, wild American experience.”
Talking Travel Writing with Tim Cahill
by Michael Shapiro | 08.18.06 | 1:33 AM ET
Video: Travels with “Laguna Beach” Star Jessica Smith
by Michael Yessis | 08.16.06 | 1:17 PM ET
Last year we noted that guidebook publisher Let’s Go named Jessica Smith of MTV’s “Laguna Beach” as a spokesperson. Part of the gig apparently included shooting video during a spring-break trip to Europe, which recently debuted on uthtv.com. In the first episode, the cameras follow Smith through London. The result: one not-so-discreet plug for Let’s Go, and lots of yawn-inducing mingling with people who recognize her from the TV show. Still, parts of the video offer an interesting look at someone embarking on a trip to Europe for the first time, dealing with what to pack, navigating new cities and what it feels like to stand out in a foreign place. More of her travel videos are on the way.
Rory Stewart’s “The Prince of the Marshes”: Excerpts on Slate
by Michael Yessis | 08.02.06 | 8:04 AM ET
All this week Slate is featuring excerpts from Rory Stewart’s new book The Prince of the Marshes, which focuses on his experiences as the Governor of Maysan province in southern Iraq. Stewart is also the author of the acclaimed The Places in Between, a chronicle of his walk across Afghanistan in 2002.
Travel Writing for Pleasure: The Joys of Keeping a Journal
by Michael Yessis | 07.31.06 | 2:38 PM ET
Deborah Burand wrote a short but sweet story for Transitions Abroad a few months back about keeping a travel journal. As far as I can tell, the magazine didn’t post it online but Utne has reprinted it in its July/August 2006 issue. “My first journal is housed in a small, pink, spiral-bound notebook, the kind you can buy in the corner drugstore,” she writes. “The pages are yellow and brittle with age. An entry from the first day of my family’s cross-country drive to California reads, ‘The loveliness of this morning is to me a good omen that we shall find beauty everywhere on our trip.’ I have to admit I am more than a little in love with the eager 12-year-old who wrote those words, trying on grown-up ideas the way she once tried on her mother’s petticoats and long dresses.”
