• Categories

  • Air Travel (22)
  • DIVERSIONS (51)
    • Holiday (6)
  • INDIVIDUALS' WEBSITES (83)
    • Blogger (18)
    • Designer (5)
    • Editor (14)
    • Founder (7)
    • Photographer (28)
    • Publisher (5)
    • Speaker (10)
    • Teacher (10)
    • Writer (62)
    • Writing Coach (2)
  • NEWS and RESOURCES (776)
    • Adventure and EcoTravel (120)
      • Australian Animals (9)
      • Circumnavigation (5)
      • Global Warming (11)
      • Kenya Safari (47)
      • Lemurs (6)
    • Books and Reviews (54)
    • Culture and Anthropology (45)
    • Educational Travel (7)
    • Food and Bevs (1)
    • Freedom, Justice, Diversity (70)
    • Health and Safety (22)
    • Language (43)
    • Nature and Science (7)
    • Quotations (63)
    • Travel Operators (13)
    • Travel Tips and Resources (115)
    • Travel Writers' News (217)
    • Writers News and Resources (139)
  • PAST EVENTS (288)
    • Author Events (67)
    • Calls for Submissions (64)
    • Classes, Salons, Workshops (152)
    • Regularly Scheduled Events (10)
  • Travel Photography (10)
  • TRAVEL WRITING 101 (281)
    • Markets for Travel Writing (131)
    • New Media, Self-Publishing/Promo (75)
    • Press Trips (4)
    • Professional and Literary Orgs (42)
    • Queries (3)
    • Rejected? (4)
  • Upcoming Events (179)
  • VOLUNTEER VACATIONS (26)
    • Conservation, Environment, Wildlife (8)
    • Family, Teen, Senior Volunteering (2)
    • Health and Safety, Sports (7)
    • Individuals, Communities in Need (11)

Thanks to Anne Sigmon for her post on Jungle Pants: Twelve tips for avoiding mosquitos–and the serious diseases they carry. Anne also provides a link to Tipnut’s Over 40 Mosquito Bite Itch Relief Tips.

What is a “Visionary” Travel Writer? What is a “visionary” writer in general? How about a writer who considers the spiritual, cultural, social, emotional, physical, psychological, racial, and political context in which they travel and write, not to mention live and breathe. Where ever you go there you are, right? We take ourselves everywhere. So a visionary writer is one who travels first into the miraculously complex depths of their own soul, and is willing to look at and express the whole kit and kaboodle, the “full catastrophe”—dark AND light, joy AND sorrow, beauty AND terror—with humility, insight, humor, and integrity.  Read more... (193 words, 1 image, estimated 46 secs reading time)

October 23, 2011

to

October 29, 2011

Immerse yourself in writing, relaxing, and exploring one of Mexico’s most beautiful colonial towns. The workshop is intimate, with a maximum of nine students, and held in a luxurious villa in the center of town, with lots of nooks and terraces for writing, reading, and dreaming. Workshop includes daily writing sessions in the morning, a reception, lunch at the villa, a cooking class and lunch in the country, a tour of town, an excursion to a private folk art museum, and a celebratory dinner and reading. $995 does not include airfare or accommodations (we’ll help arrange those). Visit Laura’s website for details and photos.  Read more... (174 words, 1 image, estimated 42 secs reading time)

San Francisco travel writers Jules and Effin Older made a 49-second travel video about San Francisco, and it’s a finalist in the 49 Hours of My SF Video Contest. Judging was based on “creativity, originality, entertainment value, and enthusiasm for San Francisco.” Visit the site before September 5th to view all five finalists — and vote for the Olders’ Lion Hunting in San Francisco, if you’re so inspired.

Voters who register will be entered for a chance to win gift certificates to renowned San Francisco museums, restaurants, attractions and more. Voting will end on September 6, after which winners will be announced and awarded. View the video winner prize package and official rules here.

Thanks to Cheryl McLaughlin for letting us know that Kevin Smokler’s BookTour.com is closing. We hope Kevin leaves his excellent ten-part series (“Everything you Wanted to Know about Book Promotion but were Afraid to Ask”) on the web as he moves on to other projects (his next book!)

The September issue of National Geographic features Jak’s image of an albino alligator (“Claude”) as a two-page spread, leading off the “Visions” section (formerly “Visions of Earth”). The magazine only publishes three images this way each month, selected from thousands around the world for their “intriguing” and “breathtaking” qualities.

You can see more of Jak’s photography on his Facebook page.

How close to a train track can you set up a vegetable market? Watch this video to find out.

April 20, 2011

12:00 pm

April 27, 2011

12:00 pm

May 4, 2011

12:00 pm

The San Francisco Waterfront Challenge, a new weekly “identify-the-photo” game, is giving prizes to waterfront-savvy locals and visitors. The challenge starts at noon on Wednesday, on April 20^th. The photo challenge is a celebration of San Francisco’s lively waterfront and a promotion for the San Francisco Waterfront website and mobile application.

Here’s how it works:  Read more... (233 words, 1 image, estimated 56 secs reading time)

• Each Wednesday at noon for the next for six months, a photo taken somewhere along San Francisco’s waterfront, from the Golden Gate Bridge to AT&T Park, will be posted online at San Francisco Waterfront. SF Waterfront Challenge rules are on the website.

May 2, 2011

12:00 am

Call for entries: The annual Windland Smith Rice International Awards competition deadline is just days away! Enter your best nature photography before May 2, 2011 for a chance to exhibit your work at the Smithsonian.

The Nature’s Best Photography concept began with simple yet dynamic goals: to celebrate the beauty and diversity of nature through the art of photography, and to use this far-reaching medium as a creative tool for encouraging greater public interest in outdoor enjoyment and conservation stewardship.  Read more... (127 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

I love this sturdy, way-clever, thin-as-paper, easy-to-conceal travel wallet.  The linked article includes easy do-it-yourself instructions. Make several before your next trip, and stash your cash safely.

In their quest to blanket the world with superior apps, Sutro Media is looking for expert authors for the following European destinations. If you’re an expert on any of these areas, get in touch with acquisitions editor Kim Grant.

England: Most regions (but specifically Cornwall, Devon, Kent, Cambridge, Oxford, Yorkshire, Bristol); London.

Wales: Cardiff.

Scotland: general country guide, and Glasgow.

Ireland: general country guide, and Dublin, Belfast, County Cork, County Wicklow, County Galway, County Kerry, Northern Ireland.

Norway: general country guide, and Oslo, Bergen, fjords.

Sweden: general country guide, and Stockholm.

Finland: general country guide, and Helsinki.  Read more... (238 words, estimated 57 secs reading time)

Thanks to travel writer Dick Jordan (Tales Told from the Road) for his review of the App Happy class Suzanne Rodriguez and I (Laurie McAndish King) taught for people who want to develop and market their own mobile travel apps. We developed so much content for the class that we’re nearly finished with an an e-book on the same topic.

 

Salon.com co-founder and New York Times Book Review contributor Laura Miller wrote in March about about the swirling milieu that is publishing…

“Last week, the book world saw a particularly symmetrical bit of revolving door ballet as Amanda Hocking — who famously became a millionaire by selling a series of paranormal romance novels as self-published e-books — signed a contract with an old-fashioned publishing house, while the bestselling thriller author Barry Eisler walked away from a similar deal, preferring to self-publish his next book. Did I mention it was the same publisher (St. Martin’s Press) in both cases? Like I said: symmetrical.”  Read more... (111 words, estimated 27 secs reading time)

Lisa Morton’s PIRATES! Or, How to Protect Your Intellectual Property on the High Seas of the Internet provides advice for tracking and dealing with unauthorized reproduction of work you’ve published online.

Here’s a short from the Wall Street Journal, which likes Don George’s Trip Lit column for National Geographic Traveler. Well, who wouldn’t like it? Great books and incisive reviews by a legendary travel writer and editor.

“It’s a photo opportunity of a lifetime. Since 2003, Smithsonian Magazine has run an annual contest, offering photographers the chance to have their winning pictures exhibited at the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C. and published in the print edition of its Magazine. In that time, hundreds of thousands of shutterbugs from over 90 countries have submitted their best shots, but only a handful can win. We join judges behind the scenes and a winning photographer behind the lens to answer the question: what makes a simple picture a work of art?”  Read more... (154 words, 2 images, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Thanks to John Montgomery for this link to aerial photos from around the world.

June 1, 2011

Posted on February 23, 2011
Deadline: June 1, 2011

The Media, Culture, and Special Initiatives program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is accepting proposals for its 2011 documentary film grants program.

The program seeks to fund documentary film projects that address the significant social challenges of our time or explore important but under-reported topics. Domestic and international topics are welcome; preference will be given to projects that align with one of MacArthur’s grantmaking areas. Support will be provided primarily for production and post-production activities (although some of the funds may be used for pre-production or outreach activities). Documentary stories that will be told both in film and a second medium are encouraged.  Read more... (247 words, 1 image, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Congratulations to the winners, including the Bay Area’s own Michael Shapiro, who took the bronze and $500 for “Beneath the Rim,” his engaging account of following in the paddle-strokes of John Wesley Powell on a journey through the Grand Canyon.

To take your mobile phone along or not? Does your next  destination use CDMA or TDMA? AMPS? TACS? Here’s a site for travelers listing what phone systems work where.

Unsure about the electrical system at your next destination? Few other countries use the 120 volt system that is standard in the US and Canada. Libya and Aruba are close, at 127 volts, as are the Dominican Republic at 110 and El Salvador at 115. Turkmenistan is on 220, 230 is standard for the EU, and Australia uses 240.

Here’s a handy source for information about electrical systems around the world: the Global Electric and Phone Directory.

I enjoyed Laura Fraser’s talk at Bay Area Travel Writers on Saturday—especially her suggestion about writing regular “sensory postcards” as an exercise in paying attention to our surroundings and writing regularly.

Laura’s latest book is All Over the Map, in which she “tangos in Buenos Aires, seeks wisdom from an Amazonian shaman, heads off into the wilderness on Outward Bound, goes on a ten-day meditation retreat, interviews sex-trafficked women in Italy, and reports on the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda.”

I met Teresa LeYung Ryan at the Bay Area Travel Writers meeting on Saturday, and had a few minutes to look through her 100-page workbook, Build Your Writers’ Platform & Fanbase in 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and media Attention NOW. It looks like a good resource; let me know what you think if you’ve read/used it.

Through a special agreement with more than 800 newspapers worldwide, the Washington, DC Newseum displays the front pages of newspapers from around the world each day on its website. The front pages are in their original, unedited form.

Thanks to John Montgomery (Montgomery Photographic) for the link.

April 1, 2011

12:00 am

It’s time to begin gathering your best work over the past year to enter in the 27th Annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.

All information and entry materials are posted online at satwf.com. SATW has made a number of changes this year, including more categories for online work. Sign up here to receive updates by email. Entries must be postmarked by April 1.

• Receive Updates by Email

• San Francisco Waterfront—It’s Alive!

• Upcoming Events

  • No events.

• Travel Quotations

  Loading Quotes...