Friends and vagabonders,
This month I’m happy to announce that a couple of the feature articles I’ve written over the past year have finally hit the newsstands. One article, “The Last Archipelago”, appears in the July issue of Conde Nast Traveler, accompanied by several pages of photos by Cathrine Wessel. This story recounts an adventure in search of the elusive Moken sea-gypsies in Myanmar’s Mergui Archipelago (which is a remarkably isolated and pristine region, despite its proximity to popular Thai destinations such as the Similans and Phuket).
My other story, “Room With a Skew”, appears in the July/August issue of National Geographic Traveler. This is a humorous essay about the challenges of staying in a luxury hotel (Bangkok’s posh Oriental) after two years of haunting budget flophouses. It is accompanied by illustrations (though, for some reason, the artist chose to portray me as a dark-haired, blue-eyed fellow with graying temples and a goatee).
In other news, my latest radio essay, Raising My Parents in Mongolia, was broadcast on NPR’s Savvy Traveler late last month. In this piece, I recount a trip to Mongolia with my parents last summer — and how the experience resulted in a quirky reversal of the whole parent-child dynamic.
Elsewhere on this site, this month’s RolfPotts.com Writers section features an interview with New Yorker and National Geographic writer Peter Hessler, whose “River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze” was acclaimed by several critics as the best travel book of 2001 (and, speaking from experience, I’d say the book should be required reading for anyone who’s ever taught — or plans to teach — English in East Asia). In August, the Writers section will feature an interview with Lucy McCauley, whose travel essays have appeared in Salon, the Atlantic Monthly, the Harvard Review, and several Travelers Tales anthologies.
On a final note, I’m pleased to announce that Trip Lit has listed RolfPotts.com as one of the “Ten Best Travel Sites on the Web.” “[Potts] freely dispenses advice,” the listing reads, “and his interviews with others in the industry offer insight into what it’s like to be a travel writer.” My thanks to Trip Lit for noticing my efforts, and kudos to all the travel writers who’ve lent me their insight over the past two years!
That’s all the news for this month, but do check back in September for the latest on my forthcoming book, which will be released by Random House/Villard in January.
Till then, cheers — and happy vagabonding!
Rolf
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