Trisha Miller from Travel Writers Exchange recently wrote about the power of print and how, as travel writers, we should support the magazines we want to write for. While I agree with her completely, I can guarantee that I would be reading AFAR whether I was a travel writer or not.
When all other magazines were downsizing staff, shrinking budgets and closing doors, the founders of AFAR, Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz, began publishing what is arguably one of the most genuine, readable magazines on the market today. It was an idea that went against all logic, but so does their magazine, which is why it’s such a great discovery.
AFAR Media sums up its mission succinctly:
Travel is changing. The world has grown smaller, more accessible, yet homogenized and less exotic. Today’s travelers want to get beyond the superficial, the mass-produced, the mass-consumed, and the mass-experienced. They look for the authentic in people, places, and things.
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Posted in: Reading, Travel Writing
My dad and me at Death Valley in May 2009. I blame him for my love of travel.
It’s hard to believe that only one year ago I called my dad on my way to work and asked him a question that has changed the course of my life. The question was this: Should I apply for the Digital Vagabonding Roads Scholarship?
Applying for the scholarship meant that, if I won, I would have to quit my full-time job to road trip for the whole summer, writing and photographing my journey as I went. The idea of applying for a scholarship that would force me to leave the confining, restricting and suffocating but comforting full-time job in a full-time crappy economy was a scary one.
My dad, who worked in Corporate America for the same company up until the day he was forced to retire, said one word in response to my question: Yes.
And so I applied.
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Posted in: Contemplation, Roads Scholars 2009, Travel Writing
I started Kaleidoscopic Wandering in June of this year as a way to record my journey as a Digital Vagabonding Roads Scholar. Who knew that so much could happen in seven short months?
Since June, Kaleidoscopic Wandering has blossomed to nearly 70 posts with more than 350 comments. Nearly 90 people follow this blog via RSS, 148 of you are fans of its Facebook page and almost 1,500 followers are kept updated on this blog’s contents via Twitter.
To round out the year, I wanted to share the most popular posts on Kaleidoscopic Wandering (just in case you missed them the first time around):
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Posted in: Travel Writing
I am on the verge of leaving for my first ever press trip, a week-long, whirlwind tour through Honduras. The itinerary is jam packed, and I’m rip-roaring ready to go, but every once in awhile a little tiny wave of panic shoots down my spine. What am I doing preparing for a press trip? This is definitely territory I’ve never been in, and it all seems just a bit overwhelming.
My contacts in the travel writing industry have been great in answering my questions and providing insight into the world of press trips, and I’ve also been doing some research on my own. Here are some of the best resources I’ve found around the web that have been helpful in my preparation for the quickly approaching departure date:
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Posted in: Travel Writing
I spend a lot of time hopping around the Internet looking for travel magazines that don’t know yet that they want to feature my writing front and center. As a student at MatadorU, I’ve stepped up the search for my own writing purposes, and if you are also an aspiring travel writer, I encourage you to check out the following paying publications, all of which are currently seeking submissions:
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Posted in: Travel Writing
Travel writing: The act of leisurely journeying around a city, region or country mingling with the locals, finding hidden dining and sleeping establishments, and fully experiencing the intricacies of a culture unrestricted by time or money, then translating those experiences into eloquent prose so that others can find equally rewarding and memorable experiences when they, too, travel to that city, region or country.
Or not so much, according to Thomas Kohnstamm, author of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism.
With two months and a limited monetary advance, Kohnstamm doesn’t mask the near impossibility of covering and writing about six Brazilian states for an updated Lonely Planet guidebook. But he’s stuck in a dead-end job with a newly robbed apartment and a relationship that dances dangerously close to non-existent. What else is a guy to do but accept the few dollars dangled in front of him and hop a plane to South America?
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Posted in: Reading, Travel Writing
Trisha Miller from Travel Writers Exchange recently wrote about the power of print and how, as travel writers, we should support the magazines we want to write for. While I agree with her completely, I can guarantee that I would be reading AFAR whether I was a travel writer or not.
