Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
New York Times Kills JT LeRoy Travel Story Because JT LeRoy May Not Exist
by Michael Yessis | 11.15.05 | 5:02 AM ET
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Yahoo! BuzzAdam Gopnik Profiled
by Jim Benning | 11.10.05 | 1:33 PM ET
The Paris to the Moon author has just published a children’s book, “The King in the Window,” and is profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle. “For 10 years, Gopnik has been in the unusual position of explaining the French and French culture to Americans, in his New Yorker dispatches and ‘Paris to the Moon,’ then in the stellar anthology he edited, ‘Americans in Paris,’” the paper reports. “‘The King in the Window’” may be his last book on the City of Light.”
Michael Palin Puts Off Retirement, Schedules Another Travel Series
by Michael Yessis | 11.10.05 | 4:33 AM ET
The former Monty Python member told the crowd at a recent charity event in London that he will hit the road again. “I was thinking of retiring,” the 62-year-old Palin said, according to a Chortle report. “But what would I do? Probably just travel.” Palin, who has chronicled his extensive travels in video and book form, says he’ll stay closer to home this time around. Eastern Europe is the likely destination.
GoNOMAD Travel Writing Grants
by Jim Benning | 11.09.05 | 4:43 PM ET
The site is giving away $500 in a quarterly contest, and the next entry deadline is Nov. 15.
Jetsetters Magazine Vs. Carl Parkes?
by Jim Benning | 11.09.05 | 3:50 PM ET
Travel writer Carl Parkes has the details on his Web site.
“Do We Need to Travel to Write?”
by Jim Benning | 11.07.05 | 1:03 PM ET
That question, posted by someone on the Travelwriters.com bulletin board, has spawned an earnest discussion among travel writers. Dude, that’s why they call it travel writing.
Interview with Joshua Berman
by Michael Yessis | 11.03.05 | 3:28 AM ET
Rolf Potts has posted a Q&A with writer Joshua Berman, whose book on Belize won the 2005 Lowell Thomas Award for best guidebook. He tells Potts that travel writing isn’t the most lucrative gig: “The only way I’ve been able to live off my writing is by taking my relatively meager book advances and running straight for the border, preferably to a country like Nicaragua where my expenses are minimal to nil.”
A Travel Writer’s Campaign to Impeach President Bush
by Jim Benning | 11.02.05 | 7:45 AM ET
Travel writer Brad Newsham, author of the fine travel memoir Take Me With You, has launched an effort to impeach President Bush. No joke. At his Web site, where he outlines the campaign, he notes that he initially believed the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq. Now, he writes, “The number of people who still believe we were not consciously manipulated into an illegal, discretionary war is now roughly the same as the number of people who still believe in O.J.”
Travel From an Academic Point of View
by Michael Yessis | 10.31.05 | 4:27 AM ET
A lot of people ask vagabond Rolf Potts questions about the art of travel, many of which he answers in a column for World Hum. Sometimes he’s asked by academics and graduate students to talk about travel from another perspective, and he’s decided to start featuring some of those exchanges on his Vagabonding site.
Travelwriters.com Gets a Facelift
by Jim Benning | 10.25.05 | 8:22 PM ET
Every so often I visit the Travelwriters.com bulletin board to see what writers are talking about, complaining about or wondering about. (The site has other features, too, but I haven’t used them.) Today, I noticed that the site has been given a sharp new look.
The Return Flight: A Snapshot
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.05 | 7:50 AM ET
Thomas Swick has another gem of a column in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel, spending 721 well-chosen words on something not too many travel writers write about: the flight home. It’s terrific you-are-there writing.
Tracking Travel Inspired by Literature
by Michael Yessis | 10.12.05 | 12:58 PM ET
Talking Travel Writing in Key West
by Jim Benning | 10.06.05 | 10:50 AM ET
Organizers of the Key West Literary Seminar have put together an all-star line-up for its three-day January event, which focuses on travel and adventure writing. Among the scheduled panelists: Pico Iyer, Tony Horwitz, Patrick Symmes, Kate Wheeler, Peter Matthiessen and Barry Lopez. According to the seminar Web site, the event is sold out, and those who register will be added to a wait list.
Tanya Shaffer’s “Baby Taj”: A “Delectable New Play”
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.05 | 4:46 AM ET
Travel writer and playwright Tanya Shaffer’s latest effort, Baby Taj, earned a rave review from the Robert Hurwitt in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The play, which is partly based on her travels through India, is “a witty and probing culture clash between free-thinking modernity and long-established traditions that discovers degrees of freedom within cultural restrictions and incapacitating constraints in freedom,” Hurwitt writes.
Tom Haines Wins Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year
by Michael Yessis | 09.21.05 | 4:20 AM ET
