Amy Gigi Alexander is a writer, editor, publisher, and geocultural explorer with an emphasis on travel writing, landscapes imagined and real, memoir, poetry, and lyrical magical realism paired with psychogeography. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the British literary journal Panorama: the Journal of Intelligent Travel, the publisher of Panoramic Publishing, and has taught travel and landscape writing around the world, most recently in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. Her award winning travel writing has appeared in many publications and anthologies, from National Geographic Traveler to BBC Travel to Skylife, from Lonely Planet to Best Travel Writing, as well as many literary anthologies and journals. .
How did you get started traveling?
I think my travels started in the library of my small town: growing up, I wanted to escape and see other places, and the way in which I could do that was through books. I read traditional young-adult books about characters and places, such as the Chronicles of Narnia and The Phantom Tollbooth, but it was discovering authors like John Steinbeck, Edna Ferber, James Baldwin, Carson McCullers, and Jack London that made me think more about the importance of travel as a mission or purpose which might change me and broaden my worldview. My first travels were based entirely in the United States, and my first “hardcore” solo trip outside of the U.S. was in my thirties, to Guatemala.
How did you get started writing?
I’ve always written, but I did not always consider myself a writer. Writing was something I did for myself, a private experience that came from a desire to be honest and real somewhere, but safe. I began writing in journals at a young age, and I have journaled ever since. I began calling myself a writer only five years ago, because other people told me I was. Before that, I considered writers to be other people, who lived “writerly” lives, and thought I was merely a scribbler.
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
When I met my first mentor Tim Cahill. He was instrumental in helping me shape what I wanted to pursue as a writer, and really helped me see myself as not just within my work, but as an innovator and creator. He was — and still is — a major influence for me, both in terms of his writing and also his early guidance. His short stories changed the way I wrote and how I thought about travel itself.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
A big challenge is always remembering that I am the “other” in a place, and not trying to fit a place or the culture of the people who live in it around my expectations. I’m a firm believer in seeing myself as the exotic thing in a place, not thinking of a destination as exotic. Understanding that oneself is the oddity makes for a more open state of mind, and stories tend to be much more interesting, less typical. It’s important in my work to lose the fear of difference and be okay with not being right about everything.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
Hands down, it’s the plethora of deadlines: every single day I have work, I have to complete, so I do much of my work on the road, with notes. One thing Tim Cahill taught me was that note taking makes the story. Good notes, and it’s easier to organize a piece to make a deadline. Poor notes, and one scrambles aimlessly.
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
I have multiple projects going on all the time, and some of them don’t pay. Literary journals and publishing houses do not run them themselves! I have books to complete, essays due, articles to write, expeditions, and a whole platform to support. From a business standpoint, each week I have to consider how many work hours I have, and how to divide it so that both the paying work and the nonpaying work get what they need. It’s a tightrope walk, and requires constant examination to do things better. For me, understanding being a writer is a process, and being open to shifting things around has been important from a business standpoint.
Learning to be flexible is what I’m working on, at the moment. Writing is a business, but not everything I do or make pays me in money — some things pay in social change, or platform building, or a future project collaboration.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
When I first began calling myself a writer, I worked as a nanny. I kept that job for about a year, until it became impossible to work full time and say yes to opportunities, and then I went full time into the writing life. I didn’t want to write things I did not love writing, so I took to the wild with a tent, for the most part, and wrote stories from a tiny laptop. I made a living by freelancing and giving talks. After a year of that, I was invited to teach, and I began doing less freelancing, and focusing more on literature. Right now I make a living from a variety of things: besides paid writing, I edit work, including books; I mentor a group of students; I teach workshops around the world; and I give talks at literary events. I also should add have less pressure financially, because I moved to Mexico, and this affords me the opportunity to choose my work a little differently.
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
I cannot only mention nonfiction, because travel writing is much more than that. I could list a hundred books or more, but here is a short list of favorites from my bookcase:
For nonfiction: Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Robert MacFarlane’s Mountains of the Mind; Werner Herzog’s Of Walking in Ice; Nikos Hadjicotis’s Destination Earth; Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; Tim Cahill’s Jaguars Ripped my Flesh; Richard Wright’s New Reflections; Noo Saro Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland; Umberto Ecco’s Travels in Hyperreality; anything by Rahul Sankrityayan, the father of the Hindi travelogue.
For poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, Helen Mort, Ibn Battuta, Frank Lima, Rita Dove, Sally Wen Mao, Rem Raj.
For fiction: Xavier de Maistre’s Journeys Around my Room; Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; Yvonne Adiambo Odwuor’s Dust; Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and The Baron in the Trees; Jorge Cortazar’s Hopscotch; Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss; Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen; Marguerite Duras’s The Lover; Jamaica Kinkaid’s Lucy; Robert Balano’s The Savage Detectives; Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
Honor your time: Write what you love, and don’t write what you don’t.
Hone on your craft: Read books on writing, not just travel writing. Hone your craft and storytelling skills, and push yourself to try different forms of travel writing: try poetry, narrative journalism, flash fiction, blogging, novellas. Take workshops from people who are creating the kind of work you want to make. Ignore the hype and read their work: if what they write is inspiring to you, then try to study under them and learn as much as you can. If someone ends up mentoring you, be grateful and humble for their time, and always thank them for helping you. Read as much travel writing as you can: books, travel blogs, magazines, and journals.
Do your homework: When pitching or submitting to an editor, read everything you can about them. Find out who they are and what they look for. Read the literary journal, magazine, or publishing house submission calls carefully, and then go through the publication/ books and take notes on what the works have in common. Your pitch, story, or book proposal will have a better chance of success if you do your research ahead of time.
Fill your pantry: When setting off to be a travel writer — or any kind of writer — you have to have a full pantry. I mean this literally and figuratively. Think about being prepared for the writing life in advance, and have a “pantry” full of not just beans and rice for the lean times, but a strong community — as well as supportive mentors — who can sustain you emotionally and mentally.
Be devoted to your work: the more self discipline you have, the more steps you get to skip in the process of establishing yourself and turning writing into a career.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
I think travel writing has the power to change the world. I love connecting people to places through stories. Not everyone can travel — it is a privilege, and for many, my story might be their first or only experience of that city or landscape. In the world we are living into, internationalism and diversity count, and travel writing can be a political act, as well as a way to make a bridge. I often feel more like an engineer, diplomat, and architect than a travel writer.
Share This
