Laura Kiniry is a freelance journalist specializing in travel, food, and culture. Born on the East Coast, she still considers herself a Jersey Girl (South Jersey, near Philadelphia), despite making her home in San Francisco for the last three decades. She writes regularly for such publications Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, Conde Nast Traveler, and VIA, and is the current managing editor for the Visit Oakland 2025 guide. Her travels have taken her to all seven continents—twice—with a trip to Vietnam and a climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro next to come.
How did you get started traveling?
I grew up in South Jersey, and as a kid my family often took road trips north to Quebec City to visit my Canadian cousins. My first time on a plane was a family trip to Disney World in Florida at the end of my second-grade year. However, it wasn’t until accompanying my cousin Trish on her school trip to Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) when I was 16 that I really caught the travel bug. I moved across the country to San Francisco, CA, when I was 21, and have been traveling ever since.
How did you get started writing?
I have always loved writing, and over the years many of my teachers in middle school, high school, and college encouraged me to pursue writing as a profession. After graduating from San Francisco State University with a degree in liberal studies (I’d planned on majoring in creative writing, but the evening classes overlapped with the hours I worked at a local restaurant to pay for school), I realized that I wanted to make writing my career. With a decade of regular journaling under my belt and a host of random writing classes I’d perused on my own. I scored an internship with Travelers’ Tales and volunteered as a news writer for Ethical Traveler. Then I slowly started pitching publications.
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
In 2005 I wrote Moon Handbooks’ inaugural guidebook to New Jersey. I’d been passed over for the project numerous times due to my lack of professional writing experience, but after eight months of extreme persistence (and proving that I could do the work), they decided to give me the gig. Before writing the book’s update in 2009, I interned with VIA, Northern California’s AAA travel magazine. This six-month internship taught me so much about fact-checking, writing short, feature articles, etc. I consider it the thing that really got me through the door and into journalism.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
One of the toughest things for me is having to write a story about, say, Croatia, when I’m traveling in Antarctica. Since work never really stops, I may be immersing myself in one place during the day and thinking about an entirely different place overnight.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
I’m a slow writer. I often do seven or eight drafts of a piece and really need that deadline to get me going. Thankfully, I’ve learned to start my projects a lot earlier than I used to, though anything with an open-ended deadline tends to get pushed back for more pressing work.
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
Balancing stories based on my travels with content writing that helps pay the bills. As an independent freelancer, I’m always taking on new work, and this often means that pitching new stories gets put on the back-burner while I complete higher paying assignments to stay afloat. Writing is a tricky business.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
I haven’t. I’ve been a freelance writer and journalist for nearly 20 years now, and it’s the only job I’ve held in all that time. I admittedly live very sparingly—I’ve never owned a car, I have a rent-controlled living space—but the lifestyle suits me. Sure, I would love to make more money. It’s something I’m continuously working towards, but right now experiencing the planet and its endless offerings is much more important to me.
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
Books by female travelers such as Around the Bloc by Stephanie Griest, Somebody’s Heart is Burning by Tanya Shaffer, as well as female-driven anthologies (Expat by Christina Henry de Tessan and A Woman Alone by Faith Conlon) have really stuck with me over the years. I’m also a big fan of Paul Bowles, especially The Sheltering Sky.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
My biggest advice is to be persistent, and to cast a wide net. Spend time honing the editorial relationships that you want and figuring out the stories that you’re most interested in pursuing, but don’t be afraid to take on some listicles or less exciting writing projects in the interim. It all goes towards improving your writing skills. Don’t expect to get financially rich from travel writing, but if you’re OK in getting paid in experiences, travel writing is honestly like hitting the jackpot.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
The many incredible experiences I’ve had around the world, from tracking jaguars in Brazil’s Pantanal to herding sheep in Iceland, and the people I’ve met along the way. Thanks to my life as a travel writer, I have friends and “family” nearly everywhere and wherever I am, I always feel at home.
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