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Submission Guidelines for The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13

2024-06-18T21:28:24Z

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please send us your best true stories about travel throughout the world for our award-winning series, The Best Women’s Travel Writing. We’re looking for the full range of experience: adventurous, mystical, funny, poignant, culinary, cross-cultural, transformational, romantic, illuminating, frightening, grim, sexy, spiritual—you name it. Stories should reflect the unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result.

Submission Deadline: September 30th, 2024.

Previously published essays are OK, provided you control all rights to the story. Please check that you retain rights, before submitting. Multiple submissions are also OK.

Length & Type of Story

We strongly (really, really strongly) encourage you to read the books, as there’s no better way to understand what we’re looking for.

Remuneration:

$100 honorarium, one free copy of the book, and the right to purchase an unlimited number of any Travelers’ Tales titles for 50% off the cover price (plus shipping and handling).

Submission:

PLEASE SUBMIT HERE.

Editors of magazines, websites and literary journals may email essay nominations to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com. (Please do not email directly unless you are an editor nominating contributors’ essays published in the past several years.)

Make sure to include on your essay all of your contact information, plus a 3- to 10-line bio about yourself.

Rights

We are interested in non-exclusive rights, in all languages, throughout the world. Our use of the material does not restrict the authors’ rights in any way to have their stories reprinted elsewhere.

Caveat

In most cases we will do some editing of accepted stories for considerations of style, grammar, or length and may also alter the story title. Essays not selected will be considered for future Travelers’ Tales books, unless author explicitly requests otherwise. We collect year round for this collection, so if you miss the deadline, your story will be considered for the following edition. Also, In addition to publishing books, we like to promote the best travel writing we can find and do so in the Travelers’ Tales Editors’ Choice section and elsewhere on the website. By submitting your story to Travelers’ Tales, you agree that Travelers’ Tales may post it on the site as an example of good travel writing. You will not be paid for this use, but you will retain all rights to your material, and as a Travelers’ Tales contributor you will be able to purchase any TT books at 50% off. If you do not wish Travelers’ Tales to post your story, please indicate this clearly at the beginning of your submission.

If your story is selected for publication, we will contact you regarding permission and payment.

***Due to the volume of submissions received we will only contact you if we decide to include your submission in this collection. Final decisions are made near the end of the editorial process, and all authors whose stories have been accepted are notified at that time.***

Pelican Kisses, Publications, Podcast, and Upcoming Workshops

2024-03-27T16:37:26Z

It’s not surprising it started with the birds, since I’ve been a novice birder for a few years. But Yelapa turned me obsessive. From a beach chair inside my open-air casita, I spent hours bringing the birds closer to me through my binoculars. There were brown pelicans, egrets, ibis, stilts, willets, gulls, magnificent frigatebirds, and herons (tri-color, night, and great). And on the hike to the waterfall, a great kiskadee.

Walking barefoot on the beach one afternoon, I felt something brush against my hat and heard a flutter by my ear. I looked up to see a giant brown pelican swooping away from me.

A man was walking toward me. “Did you see that?” I asked him. “Did that just happen?”

He nodded. “It definitely got some height on you.”

When I told my students later, one said, “You got a pelican kiss!”

I often feel disconnected from nature when I’m home in New Orleans, as I spend my days teaching on Zoom and writing and editing on a computer. I tend to have my head down a lot. But in Yelapa, nature came to me. Its wings tapped me on the head and said, look up.

Now that I’m home, I’m trying to do more of that.

I’m looking ahead, as well…

This May, I’ll be teaching in yet another magical setting: an agriturismo on the Ionian Seacoast, in Sicily. I’m working with two phenomenal women, Colette Hannahan and Michelle Titus. I’ll lead writing classes, Colette will lead painting and meditation, and Michelle will lead movement (yoga, Qi gong) and meditation. A few spaces are still available.

I’m also offering two workshops this summer: an online class on writing the Modern Love essay through Off Assignment’s Masters Series courses (Wednesday afternoons in July), and a morning workshop called “Writing the World” with my dear friend, Marcia DeSanctis, at the annual Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference.

Meanwhile, Studio Unfurl, the online creative community I started with my dear friends Colette and Karen is well underway, with interwoven art and writing classes, guest chats, prompt studios, mentorship, and more. A waitlist is open for our second semester.

And my friend Kelly and I have been hard at work producing season three of our travel storytelling podcast, There She Goes! We have some stunning essays coming out soon.

As for publications, a huge career highlight for me has been editing The Best Women’s Travel Writing. I’ve edited the last six collections, and I’m so pleased that Travelers’ Tales has asked to edit Volume 13, as well. It will be published in 2025, and I’m accepting submissions now. You can send your true travel essays here. (There’s no deadline yet, but I’ll post submission guidelines on social media and my website soon.)

I was also delighted to have a micro-essay published last month in one of my favorite literary journals, River Teeth.

And I have another (very) personal essay coming out (very) soon, online and in print. It’s a story I’ve been sitting on for 30 years, and I couldn’t be happier that it’s found a (very) good home: the “Modern Love” column in The New York Times! I’m still pinching myself to have a second Modern Love essay accepted.

I think that’s all for now.

I’m flying off again in a few hours, for spring break with my husband and son. I’m packing my binoculars, of course. I’ll keep looking up. I hope you will, too.

Lavinia

There She Goes Podcast

2021-07-29T15:47:50Z

Pretty sweet, right?

Season one was amazing. Kelly and I found we worked together beautifully and really enjoyed the process of becoming friends through creating a podcast together. We aired fifteen episodes (seventeen if you include two bonus episodes) featuring incredible storytellers such as Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar and We are Each Other’s Harvest, taking us to Louisiana; Faith Adiele, author of Meeting Faith, taking us to Thailand; Marcia DeSanctis, author of 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go, taking us to France; Maggie Downs, author of Brave Enough, taking us to Uganda; Mathangi Subramanian, author of A People’s History of Heaven, taking us to India; Suzanne Roberts, author of Almost Somewhere and Bad Tourist, taking us to Greece; and Ann Leary, author of The Good House and The Children, taking us to Italy.

And many more!!!!

We also got some stellar reviews and a bunch of five-star reviews, which made us super happy, and we were featured on Podbean’s Storytelling Podcast Week, which was a lot of fun. I participated in a storytelling salon, where you can hear me reading this essay from Off Assignment.

I hope you’ll give There She Goes a listen (and a five-star rating and review, if you like it, pleeaaaase!) on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you go to get your podcasts! It’s available on all major platforms. And don’t forget to follow us on instagram, too!

Call for Submissions: The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12

2019-08-20T18:33:29Z

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please send us your best true stories about travel throughout the world for our award-winning series, The Best Women’s Travel Writing. We’re looking for the full range of experience: adventurous, mystical, funny, poignant, culinary, cross-cultural, transformational, romantic, illuminating, frightening, grim, sexy, spiritual—you name it. Stories should reflect the unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result. Previously published essays are OK, provided you control all rights to the story. Multiple submissions are also OK.

Length & Type of Story

There’s no set length, but to get a sense of what we generally publish, please take a look at The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 11, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 10, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2005.

We strongly (really, really strongly) encourage you to read the books, as there’s no better way to understand what we’re looking for.

Remuneration:

$100 honorarium, one free copy of the book, and the right to purchase an unlimited number of any Travelers’ Tales titles for 50% off the cover price (plus shipping and handling).

Submission:

Please submit via the Travelers’ Tales website, here: www.travelerstalesstories.com AND send in a word doc with all your contact info on the page to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com.

PLEASE make sure to include on your essay all of your contact information, plus a 3- to 10-line bio about yourself. Essays will not be returned; notification of acceptances only, close to publication date.

Rights

We are interested in non-exclusive rights, in all languages, throughout the world. Our use of the material does not restrict the authors’ rights in any way to have their stories reprinted elsewhere.

Caveat

In most cases we will do some editing of accepted stories for considerations of style, grammar, or length and may also alter the story title.

Essays not selected will be considered for future Travelers’ Tales books, unless author explicitly requests otherwise. We collect year round for this collection, so if you miss the deadline, your story will be considered for the following edition. Also, In addition to publishing books, we like to promote the best travel writing we can find and do so in our Editors’ Choice section and elsewhere on our website. By submitting your story to Travelers’ Tales, you agree that we may post it on our site as an example of good travel writing. You will not be paid for this use, but you will retain all rights to your material, and as a Travelers’ Tales contributor you will be able to purchase any TT books at 50% off. If you do not wish us to post your story, please indicate this clearly at the beginning of your submission. If we select your story for publication, we will contact you regarding permission and payment.

***Due to the volume of submissions received we will only contact you if we decide to include your submission in this collection. Final decisions are made near the end of the editorial process, and all authors whose stories have been accepted are notified at that time.***

Playing by Heart: my first feature for AFAR Magazine

2019-08-02T03:55:12Z

This Immeasurable Place

2018-03-04T01:55:17Z

The Best Women’s Travel Writing: New York Times Book Review

2017-11-18T19:57:28Z

THE BEST WOMEN’S TRAVEL WRITING, Volume 11: True Stories From Around the World (Travelers’ Tales, paper, $19.95). For more than 20 years, Travelers’ Tales has been publishing books that might best be described as the literary equivalent of a group of travelers sitting around a dim cafe, sipping pints or prosecco and trading their best stories. With more than a hundred titles currently in print, this publisher has carved out a valuable niche in the travel world.

The latest book’s editor, Lavinia Spalding, hungry for travelers who “go with an open heart” and have “the inclination to practice human kindness, a sincere intention to build pathways of understanding and a willingness to be transformed,” read nearly 500 submissions before settling on the 31 stories that make up this diverse collection.

In the opener, Zora O’Neill finds herself drawn away from a resort’s placid blue waters and toward the newly formed refugee camps that have sprung up on the Greek island she and her family visit every year. Like so many of the stories here, “On the Migrant Trail” is told with simple grace. O’Neill’s account demonstrates once again that history’s first draft is often written by the intrepid traveler.

In the opener, Zora O’Neill finds herself drawn away from a resort’s placid blue waters and toward the newly formed refugee camps that have sprung up on the Greek island she and her family visit every year. Like so many of the stories here, “On the Migrant Trail” is told with simple grace. O’Neill’s account demonstrates once again that history’s first draft is often written by the intrepid traveler.

In a different vein, Samantha Schoech offers a hilarious yet ultimately disquieting yarn about spending a week in Venice — sans children and husband — with a gal pal and having perhaps too fine a time. Pam Mandel, in a poignant essay, deals with grief in — of all places — Waikiki. And a trip to Singapore reminds Abbie Kozolchyk of that most important of all travel maxims — call your mother. In story after story, the refreshing absence of bluster and bravado, coupled with the optimism necessary for bold travel, create a unifying narrative that testifies to the personal value and cultural import of leaving the perceived safety of home and setting out into the wider world.

The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11

2017-03-31T20:46:44Z

This is the fifth volume of the series I’ve edited, and I’m immensely proud of it. This year I read nearly five hundred submissions to choose the final thirty-one stories. The essays are, as always, wildly diverse in theme and location—they’re compelling and complicated, poignant and scary, exciting and irreverent, adventurous and quiet, beautiful and hilarious, romantic and solitary, heartbreaking and heartwarming. They tell of places like California and Cuba, Switzerland and Singapore, Iran and Iceland, Montana and Mexico and Mongolia and Mali, our own back yards and some of the farthest, most extreme corners of the world. They are the personal stories we can’t help but collect when we travel, stories of reaching out to embrace the unfamiliar and creating cross-cultural connections while learning more about ourselves as human beings.

The collection is available for pre-order now, from the usual online outlets or from your favorite independent bookstore. Please look for news of readings and events on the Best Women’s Travel Writing Facebook page. (Oh, and from April 7-June 1, you can also enter to win a copy here):

Here’s a little teaser…

In The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11, you’ll:

—go scuba diving with sharks in Palau

—cook for Syrian refugees in Greece

—be the first American to play pro basketball in the Czech Republic

—anger a nun in Ethiopia

—go whitewater rafting on the Nile in Uganda.

—help slaughter a pig in Hungary

—realize your limits of filial piety in Singapore

—seek healing at the hands of a witchdoctor in Mexico

—feast on rancid food in Iceland

—avoid hypothermia by spooning in Mongolia

—fall in love in Nepal

... and much, much more.

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you at a BWTW event!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 11

2016-07-26T17:55:13Z

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Women writers, please send us your best true stories about travel throughout the world for our annual series, The Best Women’s Travel Writing. We’re looking for the full range of experience: adventurous, mystical, funny, poignant, cuisine-related, cross-cultural, transformational, funny, illuminating, frightening, grim, you name it. Stories should reflect the unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result. Previously published essays are OK, provided you control all rights to the story. Multiple submissions are also OK.

Length & Type of Story

There’s no set length; however, I recommend a range of 1,000-5,000 words. To get a sense of what we are looking for, please take a look at The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 10, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2005.

I strongly (like, really, really strongly) encourage you to read the books, as it’s the best way to understand what we’re looking for.

Remuneration:

$100 honorarium, one free copy of the book, and the right to purchase an unlimited number of any Travelers’ Tales titles for 50% off the cover price (plus shipping and handling).

Submission:

Send your submissions in a doc or docx file to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com AND via the Travelers’ Tales website, here: www.travelerstalesstories.com

Please include on your essay all of your contact information, plus a 3- to 10-line bio about yourself. Essays will not be returned; notification of acceptances only, close to publication date.

Rights

We are interested in non-exclusive rights, in all languages, throughout the world. Our use of the material does not restrict the authors’ rights in any way to have their stories reprinted elsewhere.

Caveat

In most cases we will do some editing of accepted stories for considerations of style, grammar, or length and may also alter the story title.

Essays not selected will be considered for future Travelers’ Tales books, unless author explicitly requests otherwise. We collect year round for this annual collection, so if you miss the deadline your story will be considered for the following year. Also, In addition to publishing books, we like to promote the best travel writing we can find and do so in our Editors’ Choice section and elsewhere on our website. By submitting your story to Travelers’ Tales, you agree that we may post it on our site as an example of good travel writing. You will not be paid for this use, but you will retain all rights to your material, and as a Travelers’ Tales contributor you will be able to purchase any TT books at 50% off. If you do not wish us to post your story, please indicate this clearly at the beginning of your submission. If we select your story for publication, we will contact you regarding permission and payment.

***Due to the large number of submissions received we will only contact you if we decide to include your submission in this collection. Final decisions are made near the end of the editorial process, and all authors whose stories have been accepted are notified at that time.***

Introducing the great Edith Wharton

2014-05-21T16:54:51Z

Here’s a quick description, from publisher Restless Books:

A trailblazer among American women at the turn of the century, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented “motor-car” to explore the cities and countryside of France. As the Whartons embark on three separate journeys through the country in 1906 and 1907, accompanied first by Edith’s brother, Harry Jones, and then by Henry James, Edith is enamored by the freedom that this new form of transport has given her. With a keen eye for architecture and art, and the engrossing style that would later earn her a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Wharton writes about places that she previously “yearned for from the windows of the train.”

Now published for the first time as an illustrated eBook with photographs reproduced directly from the 1908 first edition, and newly introduced by acclaimed travel writer Lavinia Spalding, the Restless Books edition of A Motor-Flight Through France will inspire current and future generations of readers and adventurers.

And here’s a short excerpt from my intro:

“Although we know Wharton best for her novels and novellas—she penned twenty-one, including such classics as The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, The Custom of the Country, and Ethan Frome—she also wrote luminously about travel, publishing three travel memoirs and many articles. Her close friend Henry James (who accompanied her on one of her motor-flights through France) nicknamed her “pendulum-woman” because she crossed the Atlantic so often—as many as seventy times in her life. Wharton wrote that she had “an incurable passion for the road” and once told a friend that she planned to “eat the world leaf by leaf.”

Unlike many other wealthy wanderers of her time, Wharton was not content with ordinary tourism; it was the unbeaten path that called her. Her friend Percy Lubbock wrote that she “rustled unhesitatingly” into locked churches, closed galleries, and palaces where visitors were not normally allowed, in search of “hidden rarities, lost treasures and forgotten shrines.” Long before the invention of the automobile, she traveled by almost any means available—bicycle, train, mule, donkey cart, funicular, or on foot—in pursuit of obscure sites. Everything changed in 1903, when Wharton took her first ride in a motorcar in Italy and discovered her ideal mode of transportation. “I swore then and there,” she wrote, “that as soon as I could make money enough I would buy a motor.”

A Motor-Flight Through France is the first release in the Restless Women Travelers series, from new digital publisher Restless Books. The series celebrates and (re)introduces some of the most important travelogues written by women, with introductions by some modern women travel writers. And I’m thrilled to announce that A Motor-Flight Through France is now available to download from Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo, for only $3.99!

When I began doing research about Wharton for the introduction, filling my head every day with her words and stories, reading her autobiography, two biographies, articles, and as many letters as I could get ahold of, I became completely intimidated by her. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, the first woman to be given an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale, the first woman awarded the gold medal for literature from the American National Institute of Arts and Letters. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize for lifetime achievement in literature. She wrote forty-eight books, many of them bestsellers. The list goes on and on. The woman was, to put it mildly, formidable. She was also known for her razor-sharp wit, and the fact that she did not suffer fools.

Countless fascinating stories exist about Wharton, but one of my favorites is this: She hated the illustrations that Scribner included in The House of Mirth, so she razored them out of her own personal copy, and crossed out the name of the illustrator on the title page. Hearing this story, I found myself wondering, if we’d met, would she have liked me or hated me or tolerated me or ignored me? Would she have crossed out my name on the title page, too? But the more I got to know her, the more I fell in love. She’s immensely inspiring, as a writer, a traveler, and a woman. Edith Wharton was rebellious, courageous, brilliant, intrepid, and just basically hell-bent on doing whatever she damn well pleased, during an era in which women of her societal position were really just supposed to behave. In the end I decided that if she’d had the chance to know me, she would have liked me, because I would not have stopped until I’d made her like me.

There’s so much more to tell about her. I hope you’ll download a copy of the new edition of A Motor-Flight Through France, and—I’m really excited about this—join me in the Berkshires on Sunday, June 22 for a very special book launch party! Restless Books is hosting the launch for A Motor-Flight Through France and the Restless Women Travelers series. The event will take place at The Mount—Edith Wharton’s gorgeous mansion (see photo below, and insert yourself into the picture). Beginning at 5:30, there will be a short reading, conversation, and cocktails on the patio overlooking Wharton’s gardens, with fellow readers, writers, and travelers. I’ll be there, and I hope you will, too!

Call for Submissions: The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 10

2014-01-01T20:33:30Z

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Women writers, please send us your best stories about travel throughout the world for our annual series, The Best Women’s Travel Writing. We’re looking for the full range of experience: adventurous, mystical, funny, poignant, cuisine-related, cross-cultural, transformational, funny, illuminating, frightening, or grim-as well as solo travel and travel with friends, partners, and families. Stories should reflect that unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result. Previously published essays are OK, provided you control all rights to the story. Multiple submissions are also OK.

Length & Type of Story

There’s no set length; however, I recommend the range of 900-4,000 words. To get a sense of what we want, please see The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2005.

I strongly (like, really, really strongly) encourage you to read the books, as it’s the best way to understand what we’re looking for.

Remuneration:

$100 honorarium, one free copy of the book, and the right to purchase an unlimited number of any Travelers’ Tales titles for 50% off the cover price (plus shipping and handling).

Submission:

Send your submissions in a doc or docx file to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com

AND

via the Travelers’ Tales website, here: www.travelerstalesstories.com

Please include on your essay all of your contact information, plus a 3- to 10-line bio about yourself. Essays will not be returned; notification of acceptances only, close to publication date. Essays not selected will be considered for future Travelers’ Tales books, unless author explicitly requests otherwise. We collect year round for this annual collection, so if you miss the deadline your story will be considered for the following year.

Rights 

We are interested in non-exclusive rights, in all languages, throughout the world. our use of the material does not restrict the authors’ rights in any way to have their stories reprinted elsewhere.

Caveat 

In most cases we will do some editing of accepted stories for considerations of style, grammar, or length and may also alter the story title. ***Due to the large number of submissions received we will only contact you if we decide to include your submission in this collection. Final decisions are made near the end of the editorial process, and all authors whose stories have been accepted are notified at that time.***

In addition to publishing books, we like to promote the best travel writing we can find and do so in our Editors’ Choice section and elsewhere on our Web site. By submitting your story to Travelers’ Tales, you agree that we may post it on our site as an example of good travel writing. You will not be paid for this use, but you will retain all rights to your material, and as a Travelers’ Tales contributor you will be able to purchase any TT books at 50% off. If you do not wish us to post your story, please indicate this clearly at the beginning of your submission. If we select your story for publication, we will contact you regarding permission and payment.

The Voracious Reader

2013-04-05T21:30:28Z

And here are a few more appetizing excerpts…

Abbie Kozolchyk: Meat and Greet

“The motor-bikers had been sent back to “town” (a relative term on a one-road island), where some mystery chef had devised an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet—from the curries whose estimable coconut, coriander and lemongrass quotient immediately overtook any lingering fish smells, to the garlicky, gingery stir-fries that finished the job. And for dessert, every possible combination of banana leaf, sticky rice, mango, and taro.”

Marcia DeSanctis: Twenty Years and Counting

“The scent of tarragon wafted up from my lamb chops, and cassis ice cream added another layer of pleasure, which — along with Nicolas’ hand intermittently grazing my thigh under the table — heightened the anticipation in all my senses. The bubbly, his lips on my bare shoulder, a warm summer night –Le Grand Véfour was promise itself and the pure essence of Paris. I never forgot it.”

Layne Mosler: Passion and Pizza

“A server in a thin white dress shirt shared a joke with the beer-drinking retirees at the table next door before he took my order. He returned minutes later with a piece of fugazzettaand a slice of fainá. Individually, neither was anything special. But together, the fugazzetta—a mound of melted mozzarella and a pile of sliced onions on an inch-thick crust—and fainá– garbanzo bean flour and olive oil baked into a dense slice—made a delicious combination. Chickpeas checked the richness of the cheese. Onions, oven-roasted and paper-thin, added a strong, sweet accent.”

Marcy Gordon: Rootbound

“But here, there was pasta with sardines, fennel and pine nuts; fried eggplant with ricotta and basil, and arancini, the deep-fried rice balls stuffed with tomato ragu, ground beef, mozzarella, and peas—exactly the way my grandmother made them. There was wine drawn from a big glass jug that looked like an office water cooler, and I had my very first taste of grappa.”

Carrie Visintainer: Sidecar Sally

“I watch as she mixes cornmeal with water and places a ball of dough into a ceramic press. She pulls down the handle—thump—and nods, satisfied. With a graceful flick of her wrist, she tosses the tortilla onto a skillet over a wood stove. It sizzles. I am amazed by so many things: her ability to keep the fire at the right temperature, the perfection of her circles, the fact that she makes tortillas twice every day.”

Carol Reichert: The Threadbare Rope

“I ate a Dominican breakfast – fried eggs served on top of boiled and mashed plantains, soft cheese fried in peanut oil, slices of papaya and pineapple, and café colado, water poured over a cloth bag stuffed with ground coffee and served with steamed milk.”

Jennifer Smith: The Kiwi Hunt

“My mouth watered when the batter hit the oiled skillet. Expertly, he flipped a golden fried pancake onto my plate and poured another perfect circle on the hot pan. Reaching the highest plank shelf, he pushed aside tins of beans and dried pasta, then brought out a treasure as rare on that isolated coast as a Kiwi bird in Auckland: a fresh lemon.”

Kimberley Lovato: Lost and Liberated

“Nicolas had invited me to dinner and after several courses of his unconventional cooking, plunked a tub of ice cream down on the table, handed me an espresso spoon, and motioned for me to dig into the creamy white contents. Preparing my taste buds for vanilla or coconut, or some other sweet savor, I closed my lips around the mouthful. The cold burned my tongue, then melted down the back of my throat. Nicolas’s eyebrows arched in question.

“Goat cheese?” I guessed.

“Yes, from the village of Rocamadour,” he confirmed.”

Sarah Katin: The International Expiration Date

“From the creamy, caramel-colored sand dunes of The Emirates to the rocky, sun-cracked land of Oman, we gorged on feasts of hummus and lamb kebabs, and ended our evenings with shot-glass sized cups of thick cardamom-spiced coffee and apple mint shisha.”

Meera Subramanian: Of Monarchs and Men in Michoacan

“A man named Salvador serves us meat from a lamb he killed the day before. Each day, another animal, two on the weekends, he tells us, is buried in a pit with hot rocks and the leaves of the maguey cactus to slow cook as he sleeps. Now, he asks our preference—legs, back, balls—and lifts up steaming wet cactus leaves to find the right body part, which is thrown on the thick section of wood that is his cutting board. He chops it fine with a large cleaver, but it’s so tender itfalls apart under the blade, and a woman behind him wordlessly hands him a hot tortilla off a grill. Salvador pressures Luis into having the specialty of balls, tossing a glance at me. Luis reluctantly accepts the mushy meat. We bathe the tacos in salsa—red and green—cilantro, onions, and fresh-squeezed lime.”

Ann Hood: Runaway

“Slowly, my heart calms on that rooftop in Lhasa. I take a long, slow breath and look up at the sky, still so blue it almost hurts. I feel my heart swell with wonder. In the years I have been trying to outrun grief, I’ve learned that escaping makes me grateful to be here, to be alive. In a moment I will be drinking Lhasa beer, eating yak ribs and samosas. But first I stretch my hands upward, reaching toward that sky, as if I can actually touch it.”

Hungry for more? You can order the book here:

Workshops In Magical Places

2013-01-18T06:06:33Z

I’m now gearing up to teach another workshop, and though the locale may not seem quite as exotic, it’s an equally magical place: the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. For nearly a year I’ve been working there. The Grotto is hard to describe, but in a nutshell it’s a shared office space for working writers—poets and journalists, comedians and screenwriters, famous authors, a Pulitzer Prize winner. (And me, eternally gobsmacked to be working alongside all of them.) The best way to get a sense of the Grotto, I think, is by listening to this radio piece about it. It’s an incredible honor to write there—and to teach there.

My writing workshop, which is six weeks long, runs from February 7th to March 21st (skipping Valentine’s Day for the romantics among us). It will focus on writing the travel essay. As editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing series for three years now (I’m working on the 2013 edition now), I receive between 250-400 submissions each year. I’m often asked how on earth I select the 30-some essays that make it into each collection. And this is essentially what I will teach: how to write that story, the one that makes me want to choose it.

Hope to see you at the Grotto!

Reading My Way Around The World

2012-11-18T01:37:04Z

Speaking of strange foreign lands, this month I was in Los Angeles, participating in two readings for The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8. During Q&A, an audience member asked, “What’s different about women’s travel writing?”

“I have strong opinions on this,” I told him. I really do.

Some of my favorite travel writers are men. Don George, Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, Peter Mathiessen, Jeff Greenwald, Anthony Weller,Rolf Potts, Tim Cahill... I’ll stop there because the list is exhaustive. Still, to me, there is something undeniably special about the narratives that emerge from female travel writers. What I told the audience at Distant Lands in Pasadena (my new favorite travel store) is that I think when men write about their journeys (very generally speaking, of course), they often recount what they saw and experienced, whereas women write about what they felt and learned. What do you think?

I love the job of reading BWTW story submissions. Kudos to everyone who submitted stories this year. I’m blown away by the quality, and it’s going to be extremely challenging to choose the 30-some essays that will become next year’s volume. Entries are closed for Volume 9, but you can still submit your story for next year. And submissions are also still being accepted for The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10 (males welcome!) Submit here.

Speaking of The Best Travel Writing, I’m thrilled that an essay I wrote for Gadling was chosen for The Best Travel Writing, Volume 9! It’s a story close to my heart, about a trip I took to Alamos, Mexico. Volume 9 just hit bookstores. It’s available on Amazon, but please check your friendly, local, struggling-to-stay-afloat independent bookstore first.

Call For Submissions: The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 9

2012-10-04T04:39:33Z

THE DEADLINE IS OCTOBER 30th, 2012.

Send your submissions in a doc or docx file to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com

AND

Via the Travelers’ Tales website, here: http://www.travelerstalesstories.com/author_info.cfm

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We’re looking for the full range of experience: adventurous, mystical, funny, poignant, cuisine-related, cross-cultural, transformational, funny, illuminating, frightening, or grim-as well as solo travel and travel with friends, partners, and families. Stories should reflect that unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result. Previously published essays are oK, provided you control all rights to the story. Multiple submissions are also OK.

Length & Type of Story

There’s no set length; however, shorter stories have a better chance of being accepted. I recommend the range of 750-2,500 words. To get a sense of what we want, please see The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 8, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008,The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2007, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2005.

I strongly encourage you to read the books, as it’s the best way to understand what we’re looking for.

Remuneration:

$100 honorarium, a free copy of the book, and the right to purchase an unlimited number of any Travelers’ Tales titles for 50% off the cover price (plus shipping and handling).

Submission: send your story to lavinia@laviniaspalding.com AND

Enter here: http://www.travelerstalesstories.com/author_info.cfm

Please include on your essay all of your contact information, plus a 3- to 10-line bio about yourself. Essays will not be returned; notification of acceptances only, close to publication date. Essays not selected will be considered for future Travelers’ Tales books, unless author explicitly requests otherwise. We collect year round for this annual collection, so if you miss the deadline your story will be considered for the following year.

Rights 

We are interested in non-exclusive rights, in all languages, throughout the world. our use of the material does not restrict the authors’ rights in any way to have their stories reprinted elsewhere.

Caveat 

In most cases we will do some editing of accepted stories for considerations of style, grammar, or length and may also alter the story title. Due to the large number of submissions received we will only contact you if we decide to include your submission in this collection. Final decisions are made near the end of the editorial process, and all authors whose stories have been accepted are notified at that time.

In addition to publishing books, we like to promote the best travel writing we can find and do so in our Editors’ Choice section and elsewhere on our Web site. By submitting your story to Travelers’ Tales, you agree that we may post it on our site as an example of good travel writing. You will not be paid for this use, but you will retain all rights to your material, and as a Travelers’ Tales contributor you will be able to purchase any TT books at 50% off. If you do not wish us to post your story, please indicate this clearly at the beginning of your submission. If we select your story for publication, we will contact you regarding permission and payment.

Come Celebrate the New Year With Me in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico!

2012-09-06T20:11:36Z

Meet the Contributors of The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011

2012-09-01T21:21:05Z

Jacqueline Luckett is the author of two novels, Searching for Tina Turner and Passing Love. She lives in Oakland but travels often to nurture her passion for photography and exotic foods.

Layne Mosler is currently living in Berlin and writing Driving Hungry, a book based on her Taxi Gourmet blog that’s scheduled for publication by Vintage (Random House) in 2014.

Sarah Katin has been a television host in Korea, professor in Japan, treehouse dweller in Laos, house painter in New orleans, sangria swiller in Spain, dragon hunter in Indonesia, and fishmonger in Australia.

Anena Hansen lives in Kenya, where she works in advertising, runs a football program for disadvantaged girls, and writes about her expat-in-Africa experiences.

Jocelyn Edelstein resides in Portland, oregon, where she teaches dance, writes, and works on her upcoming documentary film, Believe The Beat, which follows a group of hip-hop dancers from Rio de Janeiro.

Laurie Weed is a freelance writer, editor, and vagabond whose stories have also appeared in The Best Women’s Travel Writing books in 2007 and 2010. She writes for magazines, guidebooks, newspapers, websites and commercial clients.

Marianne Rogoff has had stories published in The Best Travel Writing 2010, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008, and The Best Travel Writing 2006, among others. She teaches Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts.

Kasha Rigby has been a member of The North Face Ski Team since 1995. She is one of the few people in the world who has skiied from over 8,000 meters. For almost twenty years, she has traveled at least six months a year. Her writing has also been featured in Women’s Adventure Magazine and Ski Magazine.

Angie Chuang‘s work has appeared in Lonely Planet’s travel-writing anthology Tales From Nowhere, the Asian American Literary Review, Washingtonian magazine, and other venues. She is on the journalism faculty of American University School of Communication.

Carol Reichert has served as a midwife to a cow giving birth in New Zealand, danced flamenco in the mountain caves outside Granada, and learned lomi lomi massage in Hawaii. She is working on a memoir about her family’s life in a village in Southern Spain.

Conner Gorry is a journalist, freelance writer, and guidebook author who lives in Havana, Cuba. She has written over a dozen guides for Lonely Planet and other travel publishers and covers the Cuban health system for MEDICC Review.

Abbie Kozolchyk has contributed to National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, the San Francisco Chronicle, outside, World Hum, Concierge.com, Forbes Traveler, Travelers’ Tales, and numerous women’s magazines.

Anna Wexler is a freelance writer and filmmaker based in Tel Aviv whose work has appeared in a number of print and online publications, including Maxim, 18, Glimpse, Budget Travel, and Mir Afishu.

Marcy Gordon’s writing has appeared in many Travelers’ Tales anthologies. She is the editor of Leave the Lipstick, Take the Iguana: Funny Travel Stories from the Road (spring, 2012) and writes Come For the Wine, a popular blog.

Susan Rich is the author of three collections of poetry: The Cartographer’s Tongue/Poems of the World, Cures Include Travel, and The Alchemist’s Kitchen. She has received awards from PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement (London), and Peace Corps Writers.

Bridget Crocker is a contributing author to Lonely Planet guidebooks and the outdoor clothing company, Patagonia. Her work has been featured in National Geographic Adventure, Trail Runner, Paddler, and outside.

Katherine Jamieson‘s writing has been published in The New York Times, Washingtonian, Ms., Narrative Magazine, Brevity, and The Best Travel Writing 2011.

Bonnie Stewart is an educator, writer, and social media researcher whose work won the 2011 Island Literary Award for Creative Non-fiction, and has appeared in CBConline and Salon.com.

Marcia DeSanctis is a journalist and writer whose work has appeared in Vogue, Departures, The New York Times Magazine, Recce, Best Travel Writing 2011 and Town & Country.

Meera Subramanian is a contributor to such publications as The New York Times and Smithsonian, and editor of the online literary magazine Killing the Buddha.

Meet the Contributors: Jacqueline Luckett

2012-09-01T21:20:22Z

In what ways does writing inform your relationship with travel? Do you keep a journal? Conduct interviews? Write on location?

Writing about my characters’ reactions to a city increases my enjoyment and makes me more aware of the differences of my surroundings and the power of exploration. All or part of my first and second novels take place in France. Seeing a country with two sets of eyes-mine and my character’s-creates a special connection to the places I visit. I enjoy a new place as tourist, writer and observer. The combination of the three layers my writing. In Paris, the tourist took pictures of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, and eavesdropped while English-speaking guides explained the history of both. The observer noticed everything from the spittle and cigarette butts on the streets and the sanitation workers cleaning them to the twinkling chandeliers in the Musee D’orsay’s restaurant reflection on my water glass. The writer carried a journal and camera at all times. I took pictures of street signs, posters, theater marquees, doors, the ironwork, cemeteries, and whatever else would help me recall Paris’s ordinary details. I wrote sitting on park benches and in cafes, nursing coffee, undisturbed. I included snippets of conversation, details of food and architecture in my journal. I wrote scenes that took place in the locales around me, and of the sheer joy and blessing of the whole experience.

What’s one memorable travel experience you’ve had?

After my first solo trip, I swore that I would never again arrive in a foreign destination after sunset. A five-day visit to San Miguel de Allende was the first trip I’d taken alone after my divorce. I’d gotten quite accustomed to having company and a second set of hands to carry the baggage, hail taxis and, quite frankly, provide protection. I arrived at the Guanajuato airport late in the evening. It was winter and outside the terminal, the sky was nearly black. Passing through customs (literally given the green light) without a hitch, I scanned the crowd for the driver who was supposed to meet me and the placard with my name printed on it. No one.

After an hour, ill-equipped with a toddler’s Spanish vocabulary and peso-less, I begged a policeman to phone the woman who’d arranged for my driver. It seemed there’d been a mix up-I’d have to take a taxi. With the help of the policeman, I hailed a taxi with a driver who didn’t speak English. I had no idea then that San Miguel was over an hour’s drive from the airport. I had no idea that the winding road would be empty of all signs of civilization, surrounded by miles of mountains and stretches of desert; or, that my taxi would be the only vehicle on the unlit road. About thirty minutes into our trip, a car pulled up close behind us, its headlights beaming through our rear window. I panicked. My head throbbed. In my lap, my open palms stuck to my pants. My heart pounded and my imagination ran wild. Was this a hijack? Would they try to rob us? Me? I snatched my watch from my wrist, my earrings from my ears and sank down in my seat. In minutes, that seemed like hours, the car sped past us. I released a long, loud sigh. The driver laughed and mumbled something incomprehensible and tried to find another music station on the radio.

For the rest of the ride, I went through every prayer I knew, begging God, all the while, to keep me safe. He did. When San Miguel’s glittering lights, crowded streets and, finally, my hotel came into view, I laughed long and hard, no longer bothered by the late hour or the dark sky. As if it were a common language between us, the driver laughed, too. I wondered, for the first time, if he’d been nervous, too, and wished him good luck on the lonely drive back, knowing full well that I’d never make the same mistake again.

What’s on your list of future destinations?

Paris draws me to its streets and cafes more than any other city I’ve visited, so much so that I try to use it as a gateway when traveling to other parts of the world. My bucket list is long because I’m constantly adding new places, but I’m looking forward to Cuba, Istanbul, Cape Verde, Agra and the Taj Mahal, and cooking classes in Vietnam, wine tasting in Bordeaux, and searching for the shrines of Black Madonnas in Italy. Stateside I plan to revisit New orleans and the South Carolina coast.

What advice can you give to women who want to start traveling?

I have a friend who says that people can talk themselves out of anything without trying very hard. I think that observation holds true for women especially because as mothers, wives, heads of households and caretakers, we have so many obligations that take priority. If your partner or spouse isn’t interested in traveling, find a girlfriend, pick a spot and go.

I think the bigger issue for women is traveling alone. It’s wonderful and challenging. Test the waters and start small to see if you like taking solo trips. Plan with experienced travel agents, check out magazines and websites like www.journeywoman.com. once you’ve decided on a destination, call or email everyone you know and ask for “virtual” introductions to their friends in or around the destination you’ve selected. If you’re unsure (or even a bit fearful) of traveling alone, find a tour based on location or something you love to do. of course, there are pros and cons to being with a group of strangers for long periods of time, but I’ve found that the common goal of discovering new places creates friendships. If you decide to take a group tour, make sure to find out how much free time is included on the trip. There might be a shop or market you want to revisit to buy that souvenir you didn’t have time to haggle over because of the tour schedule. If you can, arrive a day before the tour starts, and challenge yourself to explore the hotel’s neighborhood. Most of all, don’t talk yourself out of the adventure. Make a plan and go for it!

In your opinion, what is the greatest reward of traveling?

Traveling alone builds self confidence, vocabulary, and sometimes ego. Alone or with someone, traveling brings a new appreciation of architecture and all of nature’s colors, for history and cultural diversity. It broadens your perspective of people and your place in the world. But its greatest reward is the appreciation one gains for home.

Meet the Contributors: Layne Mosler

2012-07-31T00:41:47Z

When did you first know you were a traveler?

When I was 7 years old, we went to LAX to pick up my grandma. I took one look at the cities on the departures board and asked mom why we never went anywhere on an airplane.

Is there something you always do, whenever you’re on a trip?

Whenever I go to a new place, I get in a taxi and ask the driver to take me to his or her favorite place to eat. It’s more than a way to learn about food I might not find otherwise—it also helps me go below the surface of a place. Taxi drivers have a unique relationship with their cities and almost always have an interesting story to tell.

What’s one place that has moved you or changed you in a significant way?

I lived in Buenos Aires for almost four years, and many of the taxi drivers I met there told me they expected a major political/economic crisis every seven or eight years. They had learned to live with turbulence, to recognize what was beyond their control, to make plans knowing that they might fall apart. Buenos Aires - actually, the taxi drivers of Buenos Aires - changed my relationship with uncertainty.
Who is the most inspiring or interesting person you’ve met on the road?

I met Germany’s answer to Zorba the Greek in a Berlin taxicab in 2010. The man is what Germans would call a lebenskuenstler: a no-office, no-boss, no-rules person who lives his life as a work of art. A year after my first taxi ride with him, we drove together from Berlin to Istanbul in a 1993 opel Astra that we christened “Zorba the Berliner.” He didn’t tell me anything about the route or his travel plans - every day was a spontaneous journey (and, for me, a struggle with the unknown). When I asked him how he’d like it if we went on a road trip in the USA and I didn’t tell him where or how we were going, he said, “I think that sounds really great!”

What’s one important lesson you’ve learned from your travels?

The best experiences are the ones you don’t engineer.

In what ways does writing inform your relationship with travel? Do you keep a journal? Conduct interviews? Write on location?

I take notes the way a lot of people might take pictures on the road - if I see a funny sign (e.g. The Universe of the Remote Control, in Buenos Aires), hear Lionel Ritchie in a fancy restaurant, or spot an architectural oddity from a taxi, I write it down. This way I pay closer attention to where I am. And when I flip through my notebook later on, I can reconstruct those moments and write about them.I also interview people (taxi drivers, tango teachers, other writers) and transcribe the interviews as quickly as I can - as I’m writing my book I’m realizing how crucial capturing all of this raw material is. I have to do a lot of mining after the fact to find the things that work for the book, but it’s so worth it.

Through travel, have you overcome any fears or obstacles?

I’ve never overcome my fears. I travel in spite of them.

What advice can you give to women who want to start traveling?

Figure out what it is you’re passionate about - eating, dancing, music, painting, architecture, whatever - and use this passion as a doorway, or an entry point, everywhere you go. This will lead you to people who share your passion and perhaps show you a side of a place you might not find in a guidebook.

The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8

2012-07-26T20:09:44Z

My new collection, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 8, is finally out! Tuesday night we had our first reading, hosted by the San Francisco Travel Lit and Lectures Series at Books, Inc. on Chestnut Street in San Francisco. It was a fantastic event, with about eighty travel fans in attendance. Standing room only! Contributors Laura Fraser, Carrie Visintainer, and Martha Ezell joined me and read excerpts from their fabulous pieces. Stay tuned for more readings and news!