The Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 12

Description

National review attention

NPR radio campaign

Galleys out for industry reviews (Kirkus, PW, Booklist, Library Journal)

Ingram galley mailing to key libraries

Editor Lavinia Spalding book tour with contributors in New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York

Women are devoted travelers and devoted readers of travel literature that speaks to them

Women make most travel decisions within families

Women are traveling solo or on women-only trips in huge numbers, and this trend will likely grow

Sharing stories and storytelling are universal traits, but women especially like to exchange the depth of their experiences

These stories will inspire a new generation of women travelers

The series' sales track is solid, and because volume 11 came out in 2017, devoted fans are hungry for the next volume

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Interest group (disambiguation)
• Friendship
• Kindness
• Travel
• Adventure
• Résilience
• Transformation

Informations

• Publié par: Travelers' Tales
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781609521905
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A CCLAIM FOR T RAVELERS T ALES B OOKS B Y AND F OR W OMEN
100 Places Every Woman Should Go
Will ignite the wanderlust in any woman . . . inspiring and delightful.
-Lowell Thomas Awards judges citation, Best Travel Book 2007
100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go
Reveals an intimacy with Italy and hones sense of adventure. Andiamo !
-France Mayes
100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in France is a treasure for any woman who wishes to know the country intimately, from its most delectable and stylish surfaces (lingerie! parfum !) to its nuanced and profound depths.
-Dani Shapiro, author of Still Writing
The Best Women s Travel Writing
The authors here know how to spin a tale.
- Body+Soul
Sand in My Bra
Bursting with exuberant candor and crackling humor.
- Publishers Weekly
Women in the Wild
A spiritual, moving and totally female book to take you around the world and back.
- Mademoiselle
A Woman s Europe
These stories will inspire women to find a way to visit places they ve only dreamed of.
- The Globe and Mail
Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travels in France
A reverie--inducing glimpse of past and present France.
-Phil Cousineau, author of The Book of Roads
A Woman s Path
A sensitive exploration of women s lives that have been unexpectedly and spiritually touched by travel experiences . . . highly recommended.
- Library Journal
A Woman s World
Packed with stories of courage and confidence, independence and introspection.
- Self Magazine
Writing Away
A witty, profound, and accessible exploration of journal--keeping.
-Anthony Weller

W OMEN S T RAVEL L ITERATURE FROM T RAVELERS T ALES
100 Places Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in Greece Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in Spain Every Woman Should Go
100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go
50 Places in Rome, Florence & Venice Every Woman Should Go
Best Women s Travel Writing series
The Girl Who Said No
Gutsy Women
Gutsy Mamas
Her Fork in the Road
Kite Strings of the Southern Cross
A Mile in Her Boots
Sand in Her Bra
More Sand in My Bra
A Mother s World
Safety and Security for Women Who Travel
The Thong Also Rises
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
Whose Panties Are These?
Wild With Child
A Woman s Asia
A Woman s Europe
A Woman s Passion for Travel
A Woman s Path
A Woman s World
A Woman s World Again
Women in the Wild

Copyright 2020 Travelers Tales. All rights reserved.
Introduction copyright 2020 by Lavinia Spalding.
Travelers Tales and Solas House are trademarks of Solas House, Inc., Palo Alto, California, travelerstales.com | solashouse.com
Credits and copyright notices for the individual articles in this collection are given starting on page 319.
Art direction and cover design: Kimberly Nelson
Cover photograph: Hans Vivek, New Delhi, India
Interior design and page layout: Howie Severson
ISBN: 978-1-60952-189-9
ISSN: 1553-054X
E-ISBN: 978-1-60952-190-5
First Edition
Printed in the United States
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Helen Prothero, who always steers toward love.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, worry, eat, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.
-M AYA A NGELOU
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
-U RSULA K . L E G UIN
Table of Contents
Introduction
Lavinia Spalding
Finding El Saez
Alia Volz
Cuba
Stolen Tickets
Naomi Melati Bishop
Indonesia, The World
Wade in the Water
Alexandria Scott
maryland
Headlights
Marcia DeSanctis
France
To the Travelers Watching Reality TV
Anna Vodicka
Bolivia
Wingmom
Suzanne Roberts
Greece
Tracking a Ghost
Jill K. Robinson
India
Half Dome
Alison Singh Gee
california
Casi Loco
Anita Cabrera
Colombia
A Strange Ambition
Eva Holland
Canada
You Don t Have to Be Here
Anne P. Beatty
Nepal
A Bedtime Story
Diane Lebow
Italy
In the Presence of Boys
Marilyn Abildskov
Japan
Traveling Queer and Far
Sally Kohn
India
Meeting Joy
Jennifer Baljko
Azerbaijan
Save the Date
Martha McCully
Spain/The World
Our Ravaged Lady
Erin Byrne
France
Key Change
Rahawa Haile
florida
A Family Project
Faith Adiele
Finland
The Godfather Town
Ann Leary
Italy
Zooming In on Petra
Susan Orlean
Jordan
A Daughter s Guide to Florence
Audrey Ferber
Italy
Frangipani
Mathangi Subramanian
India
Journey Proud
Toni Mirosevich
the Adriatic Sea
Why I Took My Daughter to Auschwitz
Peggy Orenstein
Poland
Convivencia
Christina Ammon
Spain
Making the Rounds
Abbie Kozolchyk
Peru
Call of the Sirens
Colette Hannahan
ireland/France
Single Woman Traveling Alone
Jacqueline Luckett
Mexico
Good Enough
Anne Sigmon
Tanzania
The House on KVR Swamy Road
Sivani Babu
India
A Rare-Colored Stone
Shannon Leone Fowler
Ireland
Come and See
Kaitlin Barker Davis
Indonesia
Not a Stranger
Tania Romanov Amochaev
Bhutan
Acknowledgments
About the Editor and Illustrator
Introduction

L ast year, I spent a week in Fez, Morocco, teaching a writing workshop. It was my second visit to the city, and I stayed in the old, walled medina. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, F s-el-Bali is a maze of more than nine thousand narrow, winding pedestrian streets filled with homes, schools, mosques, restaurants, hammams (bath houses), riads (guest houses), and souks (markets). The medina was a clogged, chaotic blur, an ever-swirling kaleidoscope of color and sound and scent-and while mesmerized, I tried hard to keep my bearings.
I didn t stand a chance. I got lost every two minutes: any time I unbolted the heavy door of my riad and stepped outside, or exited a caf , or craned my neck to gaze at a thin bookmark of blue sky above the peeling paint of an orange wall. I got lost because the medina s serpentine byways are mostly unnamed, and because I had no cell service (and thus no GPS) and neglected to orient myself by obvious landmarks, and because the meticulously detailed map my riad host annotated and explained thirteen times looked more to me like a brain than a map.
It didn t help that I have a poor sense of direction; wherever I go in the world, I become at least temporarily misplaced. Still, the version of disorientation handed to me in Fez was extreme, and multiplied by the men who materialized whenever I looked confused (again, every two minutes) to insist I was heading the wrong way, down a dead-end street, and needed to follow them. I d been warned about these false guides who pretended to show tourists to their hotels but steered them instead to their shops, and I knew how to respond: La, shukran, I d say firmly, No, thank you, then quicken my pace, perhaps turning a corner with confidence, and wind up even farther off course. At which point they d request payment for their services.
Finally, I received some advice.
Let yourself get lost, a friend said. You re supposed to get lost.
And when I no longer wish to be lost?
Ask a woman for directions. Women won t steer you wrong.
In the days that followed I surrendered to the labyrinth, turning this way and that, wholly absorbed. I meandered through shops stocked with dainty glass teacups, ankle-length djellabas (traditional robes), silver teapots, and tall, tidy cones of saffron and cinnamon. I admired brass lamps the size of beach umbrellas and touched the soft leather of purses dyed Pepto pink and parakeet green. I watched craftsmen weave linens on giant hand-operated wooden looms, ate chebakia -sesame-honey-rose-water cookies-and held mint to my nose at the phenomenally pungent eleventh-century Chouara Tannery. I whispered Buddhist prayers for caged chickens, live snails, and a camel head hanging from a hook. Then, when I tired of being directionless, I asked a woman for directions. And somehow, with women pointing the way, the way felt more familiar.
This wisdom, of both leaning into lostness and seeking guidance from women, was still on my mind six months later when I began work on The Best Women s Travel Writing, Volume 12 , and faced 1300 submissions (800 more than usual). My mind tumbled to it in the following months, as I found myself adrift in the new Covid-riddled world. It came to me whenever I called my best friend in Canada, her voice a clasped hand across a closed border, and during long chats with my mother, who was spending her quarantine drawing portraits of fierce goddesses and brilliant female scientists. I contemplated it when I began helping my son with online preschool  (in French; I don t speak French) and found sanity among a new group of mom friends. And I reflected on it at the threshold of an essential anti-racism reckonin