Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn
by Jim Benning | 05.05.06 | 2:57 PM ET
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Yahoo! Buzz“Life Is a Non-Stop Cavalcade of Fascination”
by Jim Benning | 04.25.06 | 3:56 PM ET
So says occasional travel writer and cheery raconteur Simon Winchester in the hourlong PBS documentary, Seeking 1906 with Simon Winchester. The production focuses on the making of Winchester’s latest tome, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. It aired on my local PBS station in Southern California last night; it’s a terrific documentary, following Winchester as he conducts research in San Francisco; buys maps from the U.S. Geological Survey with the relish of a kid in a candy store; admits he’s never actually experienced an earthquake; and comes up with several titles for his book, none of which make the final cut.
Kinsley: “These days, my dream doesn’t involve bedbugs and jackals, but a five-star hotel in Rome”
by Michael Yessis | 04.21.06 | 12:27 PM ET
And that’s just one reason he’s eschewing a chance to win a trip with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. “I try to picture the scene,” he writes in an odd but amusing slam of the globetrotting Kristof today in Slate. “It’s the middle of the night. We’re in a small tent pitched on the rocky slope of a mountain trail: me, Nick, our trusty guide, three prostitutes we’ve rescued from a life of sex slavery, and four local businessmen unjustly accused of insider trading on the village’s primitive, hand-pumped stock exchange. Outside, the jackals are yelping. Inside, nature is calling. Urgently. Am I man enough to face the jackals, or masochist enough to wait until morning? Answer: Whatever. I’m tough. I can handle either of these. But ultimately, the jackals are less terrifying than the thought of one more minute listening to Nick’s tales of all the real adventures he’s been on that make this one seem like a game of paddycakes. I flee the tent, am devoured by the jackals, and Kristof gets a column out of it.” Kinsley says he’s holding out to win a trip with Tom Friedman or, maybe, Maureen Dowd.
Study Travel Writing in Paris
by Jim Benning | 04.19.06 | 1:06 PM ET
Rolf Potts will teach his annual creative writing workshop in July at the Paris American Academy. According to the course description, “Since the Paris setting is ripe for place-based narrative, travel writing will be a central aspect of this workshop—but students will also be encouraged to explore the art of memoir, as well as the ins and outs of literary journalism.”
The 2006 Pulitzer Prizes: And the Travel-Writing Winner Is…
by Jim Benning | 04.18.06 | 5:57 PM ET
Oh, wait. Whoops. Our mistake. There is no Pulitzer travel category. Just another reminder of how low the regard is for travel writing in the American newspaper biz. It’s too bad, too, because the travel section is where most Americans are likely to first encounter published travel writing. On a brighter note, congratulations to the winners announced yesterday, including our friends at the San Diego Union-Tribune, who single-handedly uncovered the misdeeds of one very crooked congressman.
Getting Religion on the Road
by Jim Benning | 04.13.06 | 9:10 PM ET
Captain Cook Tops Wanderlust’s List of Greatest Travelers of All Time
by Michael Yessis | 04.11.06 | 2:02 PM ET
Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang finished second in the poll. Sir Richard Burton, Ibn Battuta and Christopher Columbus round out the top five. Wanderlust’s editors surveyed a bunch of famous and semi-famous modern travelers—Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, John Gimlette and Susan Spano among them—who nominated their favorites. The magazine hasn’t posted the story online, but The Independent did, complete with quotes from the nominators.
Rick Steves Has Teeth!
by Jim Benning | 04.06.06 | 5:33 PM ET
To some, this comes as a shock.
Interview with Travel Writer Amanda Jones
by Jim Benning | 04.05.06 | 12:11 PM ET
Peter Mayle: In Provence, I’m Regarded as “a Fairly Benevolent Oddity”
by Jim Benning | 04.05.06 | 9:20 AM ET
Nicholas Kristof Goes to mtvU
by Michael Yessis | 04.04.06 | 1:20 PM ET
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof continues his quest to have travel play a central role in college education by sitting for an interview with mtvU. In the four-plus minute video, Kristof touches on his own student travels and his Win a Trip with Nick Kristof contest, and is shown in some far-flung locale eating cocktail de fruit directly from a tin, using the bent lid as a taco shell-shaped spoon. The video can be reached by scrolling down mtvU’s home page.
Writing Gig of the Month: Rolling Stone Meets MTV
by Jim Benning | 04.03.06 | 6:21 PM ET
It’s not travel writing, but it’s too good to pass up mentioning. From JournalismJobs.com: “Rolling Stone is looking for aspiring amateur journalists to compete for a one-year staff position with the magazine—while MTV tapes the competition for a new reality series. Working with the magazine’s top editors, competitors will hone their writing skills and secure interviews with major musicians, actors, and politicians.” Rolling Stone has more details. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this: “It’s ‘The Real World’ meets ‘The Apprentice’ meets Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’!” When is National Geographic Traveler going to team up with the National Geographic Channel for a travel-writing version? Better yet, MTV: Have your people call our people. World Hum needs a plucky intern. We can put the candidates through the travel editorial paces. They can brood and squabble and battle their addictions and endure flying coach in front of the cameras. It’ll be great TV.
British Secondary Schools Add Michael Palin’s “Himalaya” to Required Reading List
by Michael Yessis | 03.31.06 | 1:54 PM ET
It’s part of an effort to bring students up to speed on their geography studies, the worst taught subject in British schools, according to the country’s Office for Standards in Education. “You can travel the seas, poles, and deserts and see nothing. To really understand the world you need to get under the skin of people and places. In other words, learn about geography,” said Michael Palin, a member of Monty Python and a well-traveled author, according to a report in the Mirror. “I can’t imagine a more relevant subject. We’d all be lost without it.” In Himalaya, Palin chronicles a six-month trek through India, Pakistan and China.
Which City Has the Worst Drivers?
by Michael Yessis | 03.31.06 | 1:45 AM ET
Is it Buenos Aires? Mexico City? Kuwait City? Rome? Los Angeles? London Times correspondent Chris Ayres devotes his latest So L.A. blog entry to his opinion on the subject. “[T]his week I returned from Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city whose entire population seems to be trying to break the land speed record in a 1984 Renault 9 GLS,” he writes. “And I concluded that the lapses of concentration demonstrated by motorists in Los Angeles is far preferable to the sociopathic stare of the average Porteno cab driver, who considers it his duty to accelerate towards stationary objects (including human beings) at double the speed limit, before averting multiple homicide by stomping on the brakes or swerving violently.” Sounds horrible, but I’m going the other way on this. I’ve seen some dreadful drivers here in Los Angeles. Just tonight, for instance, I was traveling a busy two-lane street when the guy in front of me swerved into the oncoming lane and stopped cold, just to drop off his passengers. No hazards. No signal. No brain.
Nicholas Kristof’s Modest Proposal: Students Should Earn Credits for Travel
by Michael Yessis | 03.28.06 | 1:30 PM ET
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof sure believes in the power of travel. On the heels of his contest to find a university student to travel with him comes a column suggesting that travel should play a central role in education at American colleges. “Universities should grant a semester’s credit to any incoming freshman who has taken a gap year to travel around the world,” he wrote last week. “In the longer term, universities should move to a three-year academic program, and require all students to live abroad for a fourth year. In that year, each student would ideally live for three months in each of four continents: Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.”
