David got started on his research early…. Photo courtesy of David Page.

Each year for the past 25 years, the Society of American Travel Writers has sponsored a travel journalism contest that has become the premier competition in this field. The Lowell Thomas Awards, named for a radio and print journalist who made his media reputation as a globe-trotting correspondent, are considered to be travel writing’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

And Matador’s own David Page earned one this year.

The Lowell Thomas Awards are given in 25 different categories; David took the bronze in the Guidebook category for his Great Destinations: Yosemite & the Southern Sierra Nevada. Explaining why they selected David’s book for an award, the judges wrote:

“David T. Page presents a thorough, entertaining guide to the region. It contains an unusually detailed section on the natural history of the area, sure to appeal to Page’s outdoor-minded readers. It’s a joy to read.”

The Lowell Thomas Award isn’t the first honor David has received for this guidebook; it also won the distinction of the Best Guidebook of 2008 from the Outdoor Writers’ Association of California.

If you’d like to read David’s book for yourself, here it is:

And be sure to check out the articles David has published on Matador, including:

How to Travel to Socotra Island, Yemen

Powderquest Patagonia: Trip Report from Devin McDonell

10 Fundamentals When Packing for a Fun Family Ski Trip

Adventures in Weaning: Cold Turkey in the Great American Desert

Community Connection:

Would you like to see your name on the list of Lowell Thomas Award winners? Join Matador U’s travel writing school to learn how to author guidebooks…and much more.

Sales are down and readers who love the feel of words in their hands worry about the impact the Kindle and other electronic readers may have on traditional books.

Photo: Daniel Zanini H

But there was a flicker of hope last week in the unlikely exchange of a gift between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and US President Barack Obama.

When the two presidents met at the Summit of the Americas, President Chavez gave President Obama a book, Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina, by Uruguayan writer and scholar, Eduardo Galeano:

Though the book was in Spanish–and Obama’s press secretary was reported as saying that Obama would be unlikely to read it for that reason–Chavez’s gift spurred a book buying surge… English and Spanish readers around the world caused Galeano’s book, which was published almost 40 years ago, to rocket to the top of bestseller lists after spending decades in the relative insularity of academic and activist circles.

According to the Guardian:

As footage of the encounter appeared on news bulletins, the book rocketed up the US paperback sales chart of the online bookseller Amazon, soaring from number 54,295 to sixth place within 24 hours.

At present, the book ranks #1 in three Amazon categories.

Could Chavez save publishing? Should the “Oprah effect” be renamed the “Chavez effect”?

Even if the impact of the gift only served to buoy the publishing industry temporarily, Chavez’s gesture helped to resuscitate a Latin American classic. You can read more about the book and its significance here.

Since then, he’s been published in the travel world’s most respected publications, racked up awards and appearances in the annual Best American Travel Writing anthologies, and produced a book – Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to The Art of Long-Term World Travel – that has inspired countless readers to make more time for travel.

Now, Rolf’s second book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer, has just been released.

To celebrate, he’s put together a virtual book tour (alongside a physical one), and today’s tour stop is none other than Matador Pulse!

We’re thrilled to have Rolf Potts here to talk about being a travel writer vs. just being a writer, some adventures that haven’t made it to publication yet, and his plans for the future.

Matador Pulse: Established writers often seem keen to warn newcomers off travel writing, pointing out that it’s not the “dream job” the aspiring writer imagines.

Some, like Chuck Thompson, paint a pretty grim picture of the industry. Others – Paul Theroux for instance – emphasize that they are simply writers, not “travel writers.”

What about you? Any urge to dissociate yourself from the “travel writer” label any time soon?

Rolf Potts: Travel writing is definitely not the “dream job” fantasy that so many people envision it to be. I touch on this a bit in my new book — particularly in the endnotes — and for years I’ve been trying to promote a more practical and realistic view of the genre through the “Writers” section of my website, which includes Q&As with nearly 100 working travel writers.

As for me, I sometimes call myself a travel writer, and other times just a writer, since I write on non-travel topics for outlets like The Believer and the New York Times Magazine. I’m sure Theroux calls himself a “writer” for the same reason, and in this way it’s more a matter of descriptive accuracy than distaste for the genre.

I find no embarrassment at the term “travel writer,” but some established writers feel the genre is too closely associated with subsidized “press trips” and brainless destination writing. This is not a new sentiment.

As Jason Wilson noted in a 2000 Salon article called “Trip Lit,” travel writing has been regarded as a lesser genre going back to the 19th century, when writers like Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote travel books less as a serious literary pursuit than an easy way to augment their income.

As you mentioned in your World Hum Q&A last week, there are two sides to travel writing: the more artistic, literary stories, and the consumer pieces.

I think most new writers aspire to end up on the literary side of things eventually – but realistically, the consumer content is much easier to a) produce and b) sell.

I know you plunged right into essay writing back in your Salon days and have hardly looked back, but for the rest of us, any thoughts on bridging that divide?

Is it a matter of choosing one or the other, or is there a way to strike a balance between selling Top 5 lists for a living and cultivating our inner essayists?

I don’t think you have to choose one or the other. Even though I was publishing literary essays early in my career, I’ve still done a fair amount of consumer writing over the years. Since consumer writing pays comparatively well, I regard service items and destination articles as a kind of “day job” that helps support my more serious writing.

I intentionally included one of these consumer articles (a story about Grenada) in my new book so I could use the chapter endnotes to comment on the limitations of pre-assigned destination stories, the ethical challenges of press-trips, and the idiosyncrasies of working with photographers.

So for those who are just starting out, I’d recommend developing your literary chops even as you research and sell consumer articles. Researching superficial service articles needn’t compromise your ability to write about richer human themes someday down the line.

Marco Polo Didn’t Go There has an unusual feature: a commentary track accompanying the essays, that reveals “the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale.”

I was impressed by the self-awareness you must have when you write, to have been able to produce that commentary.

Do you think that being conscious of your artistic decisions when writing – as opposed to just letting it flow – is an important part of good story construction?

Would you advise new writers to strive for that sort of awareness?

All the chapter endnotes were written well after the essays themselves, which means none of the stories were written with a “commentary track” in mind. I reassembled the endnote information retrospectively, using spare notes and memories of the experiences in question.

It’s interesting that you mention “letting it flow,” since it’s never that simple for me. Even when my writing is flowing, it’s doing so in the context of a deliberately structured narrative. Beginning writers sometimes forget about the importance of structure — I know I did when I was starting out.

George Orwell admitted that his most effortless-sounding prose was actually the result of painstaking effort. This applies to many writers, including me — and the passages of mine that seem to flow down the page didn’t necessarily flow that way onto the page.

In this new book, and in your whole body of work, readers get an up-close look at your travel highs and lows, personal moments and misadventures. But I’m wondering about the stories that never got written.

Have you had any especially memorable travel experiences that you’ve tried to write about – and been unable to do so?

Yes, definitely. I’ve been going to Latin America every winter for the past three years — largely in an attempt to learn how to dance — and I am currently at a loss for how to write about this increasingly quixotic endeavor.

Eight years ago I walked across Israel just a few weeks before the latest intifada — and I’m still trying to figure out ways to make this bucolic stroll sound relevant in the context of a post-9/11 world. The next year I rode a bicycle down Burma’s Irrawaddy valley, and to date I’ve only published snippets of that experience.

I’m just optimistic enough to think I’ll find a way to get all these adventures down on paper someday. Chapter 11 of my new book, which describes my attempt to track down a friend in Thailand who may or may not have been dead, was written in this way: For years I was too close to the experience emotionally, so I didn’t make it into a story until four years after it happened.

Finally, I know you’ve just wrapped up this book – and have a North American tour coming up – but looking ahead, are there any more large-scale projects on the horizon?

There are lots of possibilities, though I have yet to settle on a single one. I have an idea for a travel book set in North America, as well as a memoir set in the 1990s. I’ve been exploring some documentary television opportunities as well. And one of these days I should probably get back down the South America and learn how to dance properly.

But right now I’m just looking forward to coming back to Kansas in December and unwinding for a few weeks. I’ve literally been on the go since May, and the pace of all my recent projects has been more urgent and micromanaged than I’d prefer. So my first big task will be to rest on the prairie for a while, read my way through a stack of books, spend the holidays with my family, and try to figure out my next big journey.

We’ll look forward to reading about it. Thanks, Rolf!

You can follow the rest of Rolf Potts’ virtual book tour online, or see him in person at one of 20 cities nationwide as he celebrates the release of Marco Polo Didn’t Go There (Travelers’ Tales, 2008).  We encourage you to ask for the book at your favorite local bookstore or Amazon.com, and follow Rolf’s tour diary at Gadling starting Sept 29th.  Tomorrow’s virtual book tour stop will be at Brave New Traveler. To read Friday’s tour stop, go to The Lost Girls.

It’s a guidebook.

It’s a history book.

It’s a language guide.

And it has two language CDs that can help whip your Sicilian into shape.

Hippocrene Books’s Language and Travel Guide to Sicily (yep, that’s Sicily above), written by Sicilian born Giovanna Bellia La Marca, may be titled simply, but what its title promises is exactly what it delivers. And remarkably, the book remains small enough to be able to carry along on your trip.

The book’s chapters are organized around all the important themes–geography, food, art, architecture, annual events, and customs–and ends with a generous section loaded with restaurant and hotel recommendations.

I’d keep this book myself, but I’ve got no plans to go to Sicily anytime soon. Instead, I’m giving it away (and it’s brand new!) to the first Matador member who posts the URL for his or her profile and tells us about any past experience in Sicily or any future plans to travel there.

Community Connection: If you’re planning an Italy trip, be sure to check out Marla Seidell’s helpful guide, Slow Food, Slow Travel: Italy, over at MatadorTrips.

Photos: Macorig Polo (Flickr creative commons)

Back when they were in college, my parents’ idea of a cool Saturday night date was hunting for snakes in the Florida swampland.

Perhaps that’s why I liked Jamie James’s book, The Snake Charmer, so much; its subject, the herpetologist (that would be “professional snake guy” for the non-scientific among us) Joe Slowinski, reminded me a bit of my intrepid dad.

But there are lots of other reasons you should like The Snake Charmer.

In the tradition of retrospective eccentric outdoor adventurer narratives gone awry a la Into the Wild, James identified a compelling story and researched it fully without turning the tale into either an overly sentimental hero’s journey or an overly didactic and boring biography.

The life story of Joe Slowinski, the snake charmer of the title, is told with skill and respect. Right away, the reader learns of Slowinski’s fate after being bitten by the deadly many-banded krait, but the story is no less engaging as the result of this early spoiler.

In an impressive inversion of conventional narrative chronology, James delivers the ending in the beginning and then works his way backwards, developing Slowinski’s character by tracing his life all the way back to his outdoor-loving childhood.

Along the way, the reader becomes endeared of the intelligent yet reckless snake expert, seen through the eyes of friends, family members, colleagues, and even Slowinski’s critics. Though the reader already knows what will happen to Slowinski on his fateful 2001 trek into the high northern territory of Burma/Myanmar, the adrenaline rush of the days leading up to and including the snake bite is no less intense, and the efforts his colleagues undertook to save his life remind the reader how on-the-edge off-the-beaten path expeditions can be and how even the most experienced travelers should take precautions and exercise sound judgment on the road.

James’s story of Slowinski’s life is, finally, so compelling because the author seems, with the help (which he acknowledges) of experts, to have acquired such nuanced knowledge of his subject’s passion—snakes—and the places where Slowinski performed field work.

As much as The Snake Charmer is a fascinating tale of one man’s life and death, it is also an important chronicle that touches upon political issues and raises scientific debates, leaving the reader with lots to think about once the book has been closed.

We’re giving away our hard cover copy of The Snake Charmer!

Want it? Here’s what you need to do:

1) Sign up for a Matador profile if you don’t have one already.
2) Post the URL of your profile in a comment below.
3) In the comment, include one sentence describing why you’d like the book or tell us a good snake story.

We’ll contact the first person who responds and get your address to ship the book your way. And if you’re not the winner of this week’s freebie, check out this “trailer” for the book:

Freebies. One more reason to sign up for Matador Pulse’s RSS feed!

Photo: Martin and Kathy Dady (creative commons)

Quick! What’s the local language in Mumbai?

Answer: Marathi.

India is one of the world’s most language-rich countries, with well over 400 living languages still being spoken.

Marathi is the official language in the state of Maharashtra and the capital of Mumbai.

Fortunately for travelers who want to try out Marathi on their journey, there’s a new, slick language guide by Daniel Krasa that’s slim enough to put in a small bag, yet packed with enough information, words, and phrases to actually be useful… a rare feat.

Krasa’s Marathi Dictionary & Phrasebook, published by Hippocrene, has a Marathi-English section and English-Marathi section, as well as short but comprehensive overviews of basic grammar and the Marathi alphabet. What makes this guide really stand out, though, is the phrasebook, which has tabbed sections organized by topic.

A quick flip and you can find handy phrases related to topics as diverse as camping, bureaucracy, and healthcare, as well as the standards: directions to the toilet, basic greetings, and tips for ordering food.

The price is also right: $14.95. But for the first person who submits a comment, we’ll send you our review copy for free.

Community Connection: Love languages? Check out Tim Patterson’s 7 Tips for Learning a Foreign Language on the Road and Felicia Wong’s 10 Steps to Becoming Fluent in a Language in 6 Months or Less.

Photo: natemeg2006 (creative commons)