Talking Travel with Irina Reyn

by Kelly Amabile on

Now that the Sopranos is over, don’t go forgetting about how much you love all that is good, bad, ugly and odd about New Jersey! Despite the beating it takes as marginal step-child of Manhattan, neighboring New Jersey has loads to offer visitors and residents alike. And a new anthology from Touchstone sets out to prove just that: Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State is a literary tribute to the abused (but dearly loved) third state.

Anthology editor Irina Reyn originally hails from Russia, but spent her formative years growing up in the Garden State. Her short stories, essays and book criticisms have appeared in anthologies and publications such as Post Road, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, The Forward, San Francisco Chronicle and The Moscow Times. After reading the book (and reconnecting with my own Jersey roots) I contacted Irina to chat more about the state and this unique collection of stories:

So, how does someone who was born in Russia and currently splits her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn wind up editing an anthology about stories from New Jersey?

My parents and I moved to Fair Lawn, New Jersey when I was fifteen years old, and I stayed on at Rutgers University for four more years, so I think some of my more seminal years were spent in New Jersey. It is this unique outsider/insider perspective that enabled me to edit this book.

Can you tell our readers a little bit about some of the essays and authors who have contributed?

Yes, I was thrilled to have enticed some great writers who have already spent part of their literary careers thinking about New Jersey. There’s Frederick Reiken, for example, whose novel The Lost Legends of New Jersey I’ve admired, as well as James Kaplan who first came to my attention after I read his fabulous novel Two Guys from Verona. Joshua Braff, Lucinda Rosenfeld and Lauren Grodstein were also writing fiction set in or that was indirectly about New Jersey. So for my anthology, I tried to get these authors to tackle the subject of New Jersey more directly, in nonfiction. So Rick Reiken writes about living in a high-rise in Fort Lee during his parents’ separation, Josh Braff demystifies that particular allure of the Jersey Girl, Lauren Grodstein considers the town of Camden (the most dangerous city in the country, they say), where she teaches writing at Rutgers-Camden. The combination of all the essays paints a fascinating picture of the Garden State.

Many of these stories are very personal perspectives on the author’s relationship with a certain place – towns like Hoboken, Jersey City, Camden, Hillside. But what are some of the universal “Jersey themes” that you think run through this varied group of essays?

I think you will definitely find links between the essays. One common idea I think corroborates what I write in my introduction-that the “edge of the world” is more crucial for me than any center. I think Lucinda, Dani Shapiro, Tom Perrotta, Cathi Hanauer and others say that it is growing up in New Jersey, as observers on the fringe, so to speak, that enabled them to become writers. Another interesting connection between the pieces is a surprising sense of danger-we think of New Jersey as comfortably (perhaps blandly) safe, but as The Sopranos showed us, and as Gaiutra, Dani, Liz Keenan, Rick Reiken and Adam Lowenstein prove, New Jersey has a dark side not always evident to the casual observer. And I think a strand of real affection for the state runs through the pieces as well.

Although the stories in this collection focus primarily on living in New Jersey, and not visiting it (as a tourist destination) do you think this book could inspire someone who has written NJ off as the “armpit of America” to make a visit?

I certainly hope so. The best piece to begin with is Kathleen DeMarco’s “The Family Farm,” where she reminds us of the gorgeous and vast acres of preserved land in Southwest New Jersey. Her descriptions of cranberry farming takes one’s breath away and really makes you want to see that part of the state. We often forget that the moniker “Garden State” is not ironic-that New Jersey is one of the leading blueberry and cranberry producers in the country, not to mention famous for its tomatoes. I think this book really makes you want to visit the Pine Barrens, the Jersey shore (for those who’ve never been). I think this book shows that New Jersey is a much more interesting and varied landscape than most people give it credit for.

In his story, “New Jersey: The Movie” Adam Lowenstein describes the state as a place, “…with more roads to drive through than destinations that can be reached.” But we know there are surely things accessible and worth stopping to see in NJ! What are some places or must-have experiences that you would suggest to folks traveling to (or through) NJ?

I think he means that more metaphorically. But absolutely! The shore is a must, but I would suggest the quieter beaches. I love Spring Lake and Sea Girt, Tuckerton and Long Beach Island. Cape May is its own world, with an almost European-style beauty. I go to Lambertville several times a year and actually prefer it to its neighbor, New Hope, Pennsylvania; in Lambertville you can stroll to some great restaurants, antique, independent wine and book stores. Princeton, of course, is a day trip on its own, Montclair, Ridgewood and Metuchen are all sophisticated towns. I always have a soft spot for New Brunswick, which is in the midst of an on-going cultural renaissance. Hoboken is not considered “real” New Jersey by New Jerseyans, but its easy access from New York City makes it the ideal place to jaunt when one needs a break from Manhattan.

Lots of good suggestions there, thanks. Where else do you like to travel? Do you return to your native Russia often? What are some other places (anywhere in the world) that you have been to or enjoy visiting?

I’m heading to Moscow and Paris this summer, but I also love traveling in the U.S. and Canada. This past year, I’ve been to Toronto, Chicago, Seattle, Cleveland, Charlottesville, Virginia. And of course, New Jersey! My husband and I have family and friends to visit, so it feels like we’re in New Jersey every other week during the summers.

You mention in your introduction that you wish you could have included essays on towns like Asbury Park, Cape May, Newark, Paterson or Trenton. Do you think a second volume of stories could emerge as a future project?

I’m still excited at the prospect of readers discovering this book!

Oops! Yes, sorry to rush things. Well, can you tell us about upcoming projects that you are working on? And are any of them travel or place-related in some way?

I have a novel coming out next year called What Happened to Anna K. The novel transposes the Anna Karenina story onto the Russian and Bukharian Jewish immigrant community in Queens, New York. I also have a short story out in a wonderful literary journal called One Story, which is set in Warsaw. And the novel I’m working on now is partially set in New Jersey! Place is a crucial element in my fiction-it is often where I begin when thinking about a new story.

Thanks for talking with us Irina! We hope to help spread the word about this well-done tribute to New Jersey. And best of luck with your other writing projects.

Gadling readers: You can hear Irina and Living on the Edge contributors read from their stories at two upcoming events. There will be a reading tomorrow night, June 14, at Symposia in Hoboken. Or head to Mo Pitkins on Monday, June 18, for their evening Reading Room series event.

Talking Travel with Conor Grennan

by Justin Glow on

I first learned of Conor Grennan when I happened across his ridiculously good travel blog, “How Conor Is Spending All His Money” (now called “Conor’s Mildly Thrilling Tales“), which chronicled his first round-the-world trip. The blog struck me (metaphorically speaking, of course — it was actually quite gentle) because of Conor’s wit, charm, and ability to turn even the most boring train ride or trip to the local market into a compelling, hilarious story.

When first I emailed him to be a part of Talking Travel, he sounded genuinely excited. After all, he had just recently founded the non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal, dedicated to “reuniting trafficked and conflict-displaced children with their families by searching remote villages for parents.” After our initial conversation regarding the interview, Conor seemed to drop off the face of the planet. Emails went unanswered, and I was starting to wonder whether or not he was serious about doing the interview. A week later, however, I got a response.

“Hey Justin! Sorry about the delay,” the email went. “I’ve been really psyched to do this for a while, just been away looking for parents of trafficked children up in the mountains for the last 10 days – how’s that for a kick ass excuse?”

You can’t argue with that. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Sorry, Conor. You’ve got your efforts pointed in the wrong direction, buddy. What about Gadling? What about our feelings?” I don’t think so.

With that, I give you my interview with Conor Grennan: a man who has travelled the world, written for Lonely Planet, and Travelers’ Tales (to name a few), and now spends his days trekking through the Himalayas, reuniting trafficked children with their parents.

How did you get started traveling?

Going back, I guess it started when I graduated college in 1996 and didn’t have a job. I figured I better get the hell out of town so I wouldn’t be the unemployed bum in my group of friends. That landed me in Prague, where I stayed for almost six and a half years, then Brussels where I was for almost two years.

I distinctly remember one day in the summer of 2004 deciding that I was going to leave my job to travel, maybe for a couple of months. By the end of the day it had evolved into a year-long, around the world trip, and I’d hung a huge world map up in my office, hoping people would ask me why I’d bought the map and I could sound really cool. Nobody did. I bought my RTW ticket anyway, and ended up traveling for about eighteen months.

How did you first learn about the trafficked children in Nepal?

My round the world trip essentially began in Nepal – I had decided in advance that I was going to volunteer in an orphanage for a few months. Not for any reason grander than I felt like it was probably something that I should see and experience once in my life. I was steeling myself for three months of depression, of walking from sad child to sad child and maybe patting them on the head to comfort them. I was completely off-base. The kids were the happiest kids I’ve ever met in my life – they jumped all over me when I walked in the door; it took about three months to disentangle myself from them. I loved every minute of it.

I grew pretty attached to those kids– I lived in the village with them for about three months. As I finished my official year-long trip, I extended it by heading back to Nepal to be with the children for another few months. I learned more the second time around, how this particular type of child trafficking works in Nepal and how these children came to be separated from their parents:

In the most remote parts of the country, areas which have no roads, not a single wheeled vehicle, no electricity or toilets or even glass in the windows, you have villages scattered throughout the mountains made up of a few dozen mud huts. These areas are where the Maoist rebels had their strongholds for the last ten years of the civil war, terrorizing the defenseless and uneducated local populations, abducting one child per family for the army, abducting children from schools, controlling the people through relentless violence.

In this environment, parents were desperate to save their children. So when a man came along offering to take their children to the safety of Kathmandu, to put them in boarding schools and care for them and keep them safe, they parents leapt at the chance. The catch: his fee for this service was extortionist. Villagers had to sell their animals, their land, sometimes their houses, just to pay him. They did, because he was a well-known figure, a brother of a local politician. They sent their children away.

What they did not know was that the man was a child trafficker. Having taken their money, he would dump their children in a destitute orphanage in the city, abandon them, and cut off contact with the families. Children and parents were lost to each other. This was the case with tens of thousands of children during the civil war.

So what exactly is Next Generation Nepal, and what is the organization doing to save trafficked children?

I started Next Generation Nepal (NGN) as a response to this crisis. (The crisis of children in conflict in Nepal was named by the UN as one of its Top Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About in 2006.) We are doing two things: rescuing children and reuniting them with their families.

To rescue children, we opened a children’s home, called Dhaulagiri House, to rescue these children from these dangerously destitute orphanages, where they were not being cared for. Working with the government’s Child Welfare Board and the local police, we rescue the children from these homes, then take them into Dhaulagiri House, make sure they have access to medical attention, are properly fed, and can go to school, often for the first time in their lives. The children we rescue and care for are as young as five years old.

But we do more than this – we are one of the few organizations in Nepal who are looking to actually reunite trafficked and conflict-displaced children with their families. This is not an easy job. It requires venturing to the most remote corners of this Himalayan country, into places where there is not even a single road or wheeled vehicle, and walking through the mountains, from village to village, armed only with a photo and basic profile of the young child. Remarkably, we’ve had a lot of success with this. The look on a poverty-stricken mother’s face when you show her a photo of a child taken from her years ago is a beautiful thing.

We determine if the village is safe and if the family can support the child, then we work to bring the child home again, offering enough support so that the child can be healthy, well-fed, and educated with his or her own parents for the first time since he or she can remember. It is a huge project – thousands of children – and labor intensive, as getting into the villages isn’t easy, but we are determined to give these children back their mothers and fathers.

What is an average day for you like?

Each day is a bit different. If I’m in the mountains looking for parents, the days are extreme – lots of difficult trekking. But while in Kathmandu, where I’m based, a typical day will start from about 7 a.m. on email. Emailing is one of the most important parts of my work here – we survive on small donations from individuals, and I like to communicate with the people who are interested in finding out how they can help the children. From about 8.30-10 a.m.., I am with the children. I head over to Dhaulagiri, our children’s home – I live next door. I go over to see the kids and help them get ready for school. I love that part of the day, getting 26 children ready for school! In that time, I walk them to school, all in a line – the school is quite close. It’s pretty adorable. I hang out in the schoolyard with them for a while, as they run around and jump on you and use you like a jungle gym.

In the late morning, my colleagues and I, Farid Ait-Mansour have the typical morning Nepali meal of daal bhat (“daal” is lentils, “bhat” is rice), which is eaten by virtually all Nepalis two times per day. We spend a lot of the morning discussing any issues related to the children and strategies for the next reunification case. For the afternoon, I am back at home and I spend the afternoon working on fundraising by contacting people and organizations. We love it when people from home offer to do small fundraisers – in the office, in their school, in a local bar – it’s great talking with these people and helping spread the word about Nepal and the children who need so much help. For the rest of the afternoon, we may also be called because a parent has found their child, one of the 300 we are working with through our partner, The Umbrella Foundation. If that happens, we do an in-depth interview with the parent to learn the history of the child and how they came to be with us.

When school is out I head back to see the children, help them with homework or just hang out playing with them outside the house – they have a lot of energy to expend! We often stay to put them to bed around 8 p.m., after the evening daal bhat (not a lot of variety in Nepali cuisine). I spend the evening writing, keeping up the blog, the newsletter, or any freelance articles on NGN that we might be doing. That can go until around midnight or so.

There are no days off, not even weekends. Typically, Saturday is the one holiday of the week, but this is a busy day for us because the children are home all day from school and that is the day parents will often visit.

Wow — so what can we do to help?

In rescuing, feeding, and educating children, what we need most are donations. These are children who have no parents to take care of them, to buy them shoes, to take them to the doctor – it is the people in far away counties in the West who will have to buy these things for the children. It is why I spend so much time talking to people about the crisis of these children in post-war Nepal. There have been a couple of instances of people writing to me and offering to hold small fundraisers at home with their friends – I love those emails! It means we are feeding the children and raising awareness for this small Himalayan country on the other side of the world.

Aside from donations and fund raisers, are you looking for volunteers in Nepal?

I love to hear that people are coming to Nepal! When we can, we help find a way for them to volunteer; if it isn’t possible, we certainly invite them to come and meet the kids – the children love visitors. You just need to be ready for a bunch of little kids to jump all over you….

Are there any events scheduled for NGN in North America where people can learn more?

Yes! I’m coming back to the US for the first time in a year to attend our big annual summer event, to be held in New York City. NGN fundraisers are always a blast, a great way to meet the people who have been involved face-to-face and a way for people to learn a bit more about it.

The fundraiser this year will be held on THURSDAY, JUNE 21, from 7-10 p.m., at Phebe’s Bar, at 359 Bowery St. (and East 4th) in New York City (map). (Phone: 212-358-1902). You can soon learn more details about this event, NGN, and the kids on our website at www.nextgenerationnepal.org.

Thanks so much, Conor.

Upcoming Talking Travels in June

by Justin Glow on

May was a month filled with some pretty incredible interviews with folks like Rough Guides founder Mark Ellingham, Seal Press founder Barbara Sjoholm, actress and travel author Iris Bahr, and Susan Griffith of “Work Your Way Around the World” fame. June is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here’s some interviews we have planned this month:

  • Talking Travel with Conor Grennan, traveler, writer, and founder of Next Generation Nepal, an organization dedicated to “reuniting trafficked and conflict-displaced children with their families by searching remote villages for parents.”
  • Talking Travel with Harry Helms, author of “Top Secret Tourism.” We’ll be giving away a few copies as usual!
  • Talking Travel with Brook Silva-Braga, writer and director of the supremely awesome documentary “A Map for Saturday.” Check out the review I wrote about the movie here. Keep an eye out for this one, and get a chance to score a free copy of the DVD!
  • Talking Travel with Ingrid Emerick. Ingrid is working on a collection of women’s travel writing entitled, Go Your Own Way, due out from Seal/Avalon in May of 2007.
  • Some others we want to keep secret for now!

Talking Travel with Seal Press Founder Barbara Sjoholm

by Kelly Amabile on

Soon after I finished backpacking around Europe last year, I found myself thumbing through my journals, delighted with all the details I had captured, but frustrated over how best to distill and write meaningful stories from my travels. At about the same time, I came across Barbara Sjoholm’s latest book, Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, a memoir about her own wanderings in Europe and the parallel writing journey that she experienced during that time.

Barbara Sjoholm is a novelist, memoirist, travel writer and co-founder of Seal Press, a leader in producing books by and about women. Barbara has published fiction, non-fiction and mystery titles of her own (some earlier ones published under legal name Barbara Wilson), and has also translated several works of others from Norwegian into English. Her book The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O’Malley and other Legendary Women of the Sea was a finalist for the 2005 PEN USA Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Earlier this month I had the chance to ask Barbara about Incognito Street, her writing and travels, and the groundbreaking publishing company that she helped create over 30 years ago.

Gadling readers: We have four copies of Incognito Street, as well as a nice selection of other Seal Press titles to give away. So come along for the chat with Barbara, and when we’re through, you’ll find details about how you might win one of these books for yourself.

In this memoir about your early writing life, you focus on the three years spent traveling, studying and working in Europe, including stays in Spain, Norway and the U.K. How often have you made return visits to the places you lived during that period? And where else do you enjoy traveling besides Europe?

Those three countries in particular ended up being very important to me-I don’t know exactly why, but they all have a compelling quality or allow me to express some necessary aspect of my character––and I’ve returned to them often. I lived on and off in London for three years in the late 80s. I went back to Norway a good dozen times after I began to translate Norwegian literature. And I’ve also spent quite a bit of time in Barcelona, especially when I was doing research for my mystery novel, Gaudi Afternoon. I would love to go to Africa and India, but although I’ve been to some countries off the beaten track-Greenland, Iceland, and South Korea–––I keep gravitating back to Europe, once or twice a year. It’s partly that my writing, research, and good friendships draw me there. I’ve been writing a book about Lapland in winter and also translating a book from Denmark so that’s why I’ve been in Scandinavia a lot in recent years.

I’m very drawn to Norse and Celtic history, and I have relatives in Ireland, so I often end up in Ireland and Britain, It used to be I was mainly in Dublin or in West Cork, and in London and the south of England. Then, a few years ago, I traveled for four months around the maritime countries of the North Atlantic, collecting tales and histories about women and the sea for my book The Pirate Queen, and visiting the west coast of Ireland around Clew Bay, the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroes. That’s certainly Europe, but it’s a Europe many visitors never get to. I would love to go back to Stromness in Orkney or the Shetland Islands. Or spend more time in the Baltic on one of the hundreds of Swedish and Finnish islands.

Incognito Street introduces us to wonderful characters from your early traveling years. When traveling, do you find that your writing is shaped or influenced more by the people you meet or by the places you visit?

When I imagine traveling, I always imagine a city or a landscape and in some places that’s all I ever get to know. I love traveling in Italy, for instance, but I don’t know many Italians. Yet in other countries my experience is completely shaped by friends there and the people I meet. Writing travel journalism, translating, and doing research, I’ve many opportunities to get to know people. It really changes the sense I have of being in a foreign country, to spend time in homes, to understand what it might mean to be Catalan or Danish or an expatriate living in Greece.

During this nomadic evolution of your writing self, you expressed frustrations that you were accumulating lots of material, but unable to produce or complete any polished pieces. And you spoke about the need to strike a balance between writing and living. What advice can you share with beginning writers on how to achieve that balance of time to work on writing while also simply being present in the travel experience?

A good start would be to take a notebook everywhere, and find ways to pause in the midst of life and scribble down notes, even if it’s just fifteen or twenty minutes day. Take note of your fears and curiosity, but don’t just fill pages (as I once did!) about your inner confusion. In five or ten years it won’t seem all that riveting, believe me. Learn to observe. Write down what things taste like, what they smell like. Write down conversations, incidents on the street, newspaper headlines, funny signs, weird menu items, misunderstandings, what it feels like to try/fail to speak another language. When I look back at early journals, I’m delighted when I find paragraphs of great description or the fragments of a conversation. Even if it’s not much, it can still jog your memory and provide an image or emotional snapshot you can use later to write a story or essay.

Of all the writers you mention throughout Incognito Street (like Dickens, Thoreau, Blyth, Borges, Nin, Basho, Lessing) is there one that you feel has influenced you most in your own writing journey?

I took in all their stories and ways of writing, rejected lots of things, absorbed certain others. Borges made me interested in translation, the Icelandic sagas, and detective fiction. Thoreau made me see the details of the natural world. Two writers, Colette and Virginia Woolf, were really crucial. They wrote so well about women’s lives and explored the boundaries of fiction and memoir in much of their work. Although they weren’t strictly lesbian, both had women lovers and I knew that and it helped me understand my own complex yearnings for both men and women at the time and smoothed the way for me to become a lesbian eventually. Woolf was and is so important to me as an essayist; she has wit and elegance and originality. I read A Room of One’s Own for the first time when I was London at twenty, and I’ve read it many times since. It still seems discerning, amusing, and right-on, all these years later. Of course her work setting type and printing at the Hogarth Press was also inspirational. I wanted to have a press just like Virginia and Leonard.

While traveling in your 20’s, you were not a guidebook user and took no photos. How do you travel these days? With guidebook, digital camera, Seal Press anthology or with none of these travel aids in tow?

I’m often sorry I have almost no visual record of those early travels
and though my memories are strong, it’s not the same. Now I have two digital cameras, a point and shoot, and an SLR. But I still like best to make sketches or paint small watercolors. Drawing gives you license to sit and stare at things for a long time, which is a kind of memorization. People don’t wonder what you’re doing if you have a paintbrush or pencil in your hand. I do read guidebooks-I’ve found Lonely Planet and Rough Guides not only useful for alerting me to out-of-the-way spots, but also providing smart cultural backgrounds. When I was traveling, say, in some of the islands in the North Atlantic I’d always go to the local library and root around in their shelves for local histories and literature. I love old travelogues for their (sometimes unwitting) humor and a glimpse of how things used to be. When I was traveling in Arctic Scandinavia in winter I took the books of three British travelers who’d gone to Lapland in winter in the early part of the 20th century; they were my companions.

In Incognito Street, I enjoyed learning about the “connect-the-dots-on-the-map” method that you and Laura used to move around Spain. Are there other creative navigational tactics you used then or nowadays while traveling?

I used to go places out of curiosity. It seemed important to know every main city in Europe and all its monuments and museums. I wanted to travel to most countries in the world. Now “shoulds” don’t tug at me that much. I’m thinking I’ll probably never get to Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat, and all those places you’re supposed to see before you die. I’d like to go to Buenos Aires, but more because of Borges, and some of the politics and history. I’m more likely to go odd places, quirky places, places that are connected with a historical person or a time I’m interested in. When I was researching The Pirate Queen, about women and the sea, I went to a lot of places that don’t’ have much to recommend them now, but were still fascinating to me. I traveled to the tiny island of Papa Stronsay in Orkney for instance, just to see the old wharves where the herring lassies used to work. I visited a really remote island in the Faroes because a medieval woman once owned fleet of ships there. These places don’t have tourists, so you don’t have a tourist relationship with the people you meet. It’s quite poignant to travel to places that don’t have attractions-only past associations.

You mention Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA as one of your favorite bookstores in Incognito Street. Do you have any others?

We’re really lucky in the Northwest to still have an abundance of independent bookstores, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Every one knows the great bookstores of Seattle and Portland-Elliott Bay Books and Powell’s. But several other favorites are Port Book and News, a big, well-stocked store in Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, Village Books in Bellingham, run by the most dedicated book people in the world, and Lucy’s Books in Astoria, Oregon, on the Columbia. I feel inspired whenever I’m in these stores. I also love William James Books in Port Townsend where I live. It’s a second-hand store with narrow aisles, armchairs, a vast maritime section, in a turn-of-the-century building. An ideal bookstore.

Writer, publisher, translator, editor – Can you share some thoughts about the greatest rewards and challenges of wearing these different “hats” throughout your career?

All have been deeply satisfying, though probably writing––telling stories, making meaning––has been the greatest satisfaction-the loneliest compared to the other occupations, but the richest from an imaginative, soulful standpoint. From childhood on I wanted to be involved in the book arts in anyway I could and I feel blessed to have been able to do so much.

I did feel conflicted sometimes during my eighteen years at Seal Press because I wanted to travel and live abroad at times, but had a lot of responsibilities at home and in the office as a publisher and editor. My business partner Faith Conlon was incredibly supportive, even though I know I made her tear her hair out with my dashing about the world. I did introduce a number of foreign authors-Gerd Brantenberg, Tsitsi Dangarembga– via my travels and participation in the international women’s publishing scene, however, and I’m pleased about that. I loved everything we did at Seal, and was so proud too of pushing the envelope in terms of our subject matter: Domestic violence! Black women’s health! Lesbian writing!

But being in publishing can be stressful year after year. It involves taking financial risks and the odds aren’t great of making a success of it. I would have liked in some ways to keep Seal Press smaller, and yet we had to grow in order to keep our stability and pay the bills. As we grew we moved away from fiction and translation because they didn’t sell as well and into non-fiction books of travel and women’s studies. After I left my position as co-publisher and editor, I was the director of the non-profit Women in Translation, which did women’s fiction in translation, for a number of years. Although WIT is gone, these days Seal Press is still going strong, publishing amazing books that still push the edge. I’m delighted by the fact that 30 years after I co-founded the press, Seal is still focused on creating a forum for women writers from many different backgrounds.

Seal Press celebrated 30 years in 2006 — congratulations on founding what has become a groundbreaking and vital feminine voice in the publishing world. Can you shed some light on how the name “Seal” came to be?

There’s no particular story attached to the name Seal. Rachel da Silva was interested in printing and bought an old Chandler and Price letterpress and set it up in her mother’s garage. A few months later-this was in 1976-I met her at a party. I was eager to learn to print, and that’s how we started. Seal seemed to suggest joy and flexibility-it went together with Seattle somehow too.

And can you tell us a little bit more about your next book, The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland, that is due for release in fall 2007?

I went to Lapland in Northern Scandinavia in November of 2001 and spent the winter there. I was so enchanted by the experience of the dark polar winter that I went back two more winters. I’d been to Scandinavia, particularly Norway, quite a lot, but I didn’t know the far North well and in early and mid winter not at all. I’d been very taken with the story of the “Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen as a child growing up in California (and unsure of what snow felt or looked like). I took as my starting point the building of the Ice Hotel outside Kiruna Sweden. I watched the construction and went back to the hotel at various times over the winter months to observe it in all its touristy glory, until I finally watched it start to melt one April. On my first trip I ranged very widely around the North, trying to retrace some of the steps of earlier travelers and to understand winter tourism and the way the North was being sold as “Untouched Lapland” or “Europe’s Last Remaining Wilderness”
when it clearly wasn’t untouched or a wilderness at all.

That first journey I went up to the North Cape by ship, crossed the Finnmark Plateau by dogsled, spent time in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. I grew intrigued with the small mining town of Kiruna and began to write about its history. My second and third visits were mainly focused on Sweden. I also began to understand that the landscape was more contested than was apparent on my first visits. In fact, the indigenous Sami people had been living up there for several thousand years, and still were very much part of the picture, whether they were grazing reindeer in the traditional way or exploring new forms, like film festivals and literature, to express their culture. I got to know Lillemor Baer, a woman reindeer herder, and Jorma Lehtola, the artistic director of an indigenous people’s film festival. In the end I came to see the North as a kind of home for me, with a livelier and more challenging culture than I could have imagined.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us Barbara. We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for your new book later this year.

Barbara Sjoholm’s Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer (Seal Press, $15.95) was published in September 2006. Her next book, The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland (Shoemaker & Hoard) will be released in October 2007.

Okay gang — now, as promised, we have four copies of Incognito Street to give away to lucky readers, plus EIGHT more Seal Press titles up for grabs as well! We will choose a total of twelve random winners — the first four selected will receive a copy of Incognito Street, and then eight more randomly chosen winners will receive a copy of a different Seal Press book, including female-focused titles about Greece, Italy and the Middle East.

Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select all the lucky winners at random. Make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, June 6 at 8 PM.

Talking Travel with Rough Guides Founder Mark Ellingham

by Kelly Amabile on

Mark Ellingham and Martin Dunford met in Greece back in the early 1980’s, and soon found themselves collaborating on a guide book to the country. Rough Guides was thus born, and 25 years later the successful publishing company continues to innovate and create helpful tools that enrich the travel experience.

To commemorate their 25th anniversary, Rough Guides has produced a set of 25 compact experience guides, which will be officially released in the US on May 25. Mark was kind enough to take some time to answer our questions on a variety of topics, including the milestone birthday, future projects, and his own travel experiences.

And, as promised yesterday, as a part of the celebration, one lucky Gadling reader will win a complete set of the 25 anniversary guides. Enjoy Mark’s interview and we’ll get to the contest details at the end.

Your very first book, The Rough Guide to Greece, was published for the 11th time in 2006 – and you remain a co-author. Do you have any idea how many times you have traveled to the country since that first trip?

I’ve stopped counting, but I get neurotic if I don’t get to Greece every year or two. Despite many visits, there are still a fair number of islands I’ve not yet visited. And the pleasures of Greece don’t pale. Few things beat the travel romance of sitting on the habourfront, sipping a Greek coffee, waiting for a ferry come in to dock and transport you off to some new island – with all its promise.

What was it about Greece that initially drew you to that country over any other back in 1981?

I first went to Greece when I was sixteen and fell in love with the place. It was my first experience of the Mediterranean so that played a large part: the coast, the light, the relaxed pace of life, the people. I even like Greek food. And of course the whole country is redolent with history, which provides an intellectual curiosity alongside the sybaritic pleasures.

Can you share a few words about some of your other early travel experiences, both before and after university? Or do you recall the very first “trip” you ever took?

When I was a kid, in the 1960s and early 1970s, British people didn’t travel a whole lot – and my family didn’t have much money to do so. My first trip abroad was to Normandy, in France, aged ten. That seemed pretty exotic. In those days there was very little “globalization” of products, and I’d not seen things like mussels before, or even yogurt. I had a few holidays in Ireland as a kid, too, which I loved. Then when I was sixteen I bought an InterRail European rail pass with some friends and we headed off to Paris, Rome, Florence and on to Greece. That was fantastic – a revelation. I had itchy feet from that time onwards and dashed off to Greece each summer at university.

And where do you travel these days? Rough Guides encourages travelers to “fly less and stay longer.” What are some favorite destinations located relatively close to your home that you like to visit?

I spend part of every summer in a small, quirky hotel on the Pembrokeshire coast, in Wales, called the Druistone. If it doesn’t rain (and that’s a big “if” in Wales!) it is the most beautiful place in the world – a huge beach, wonderful cliff walks, good food and company at the hotel. I have some good friends in Spain, so go there often, too: I tried out the train to Barcelona at Christmas, which was a nice way to travel.

Congratulations on Rough Guides milestone anniversary. How did the concept for the “Ultimate Experiences” series come about?

Thanks. We wanted to do something fun and distinctive to celebrate 25 years – and we didn’t want to do another regular guide series – so we thought let’s just put out some ideas – get all our authors to join in an contribute. They’re books to browse and inspire, and – since each highlights 25 ultimate experiences in a country or region – to argue with, about whether we have the right selections.

Could you walk us through some of what happens behind the scenes to make decisions for a special series like this?

The initial decicison was pretty easy to take, and right at the outset we decided to call them “25s” and put them out in full color and in pocket format. But it took a fair bit of discussion before we hammered out the design, and then we had to consult quite widely in the book trade to see what price shops wanted them to be, and how they could be best marketed. Oh – and the editorial side was a vast amount of work. My colleagues Martin Dunford and Kate Berens co-opted pretty much the whole of our editorial and design team at various points, and probably half our authors were involved in selecting and writing up the experiences.

There are so many possible travel experiences to choose from – what process was used to narrow things down to only 25 for each book?

We trusted the authors of our main guidebooks for individual countries and regions. The themed books – Wonders of the World, Wildlife, Ethical Travel – took a bit more debate. We all chipped in ideas and Martin and Kate decided on the final selections. I think they got it pretty much right: the picks include the very best experiences and places, but the books are all peppered with more surprising and offbeat ideas, which keeps them fun to read.

The books really pop with enthusiasm — how did you decide on the compact and colorful design?

We were trying to create a series that was half book, half magazine – fun to browse, but also something you’d want to keep. Maybe leave in the bathroom for future reading!

Can you tell us a little bit more about the forthcoming Rough Guide to the World, that’s due out in the fall? Will it include all the experiences from the anniversary series? And what additional content will it contain?

The new book will include all the 25s experiences – which makes 625 – plus another 375 to bring us up to 1000. So it’s another major undertaking. It does mean we’ll be able to include a lot of selections that for one reason or another didn’t make it into the small books. The World book will be both more complete and quirkier.

I understand that music is a passion of yours, and that you are hard at work on a massive third edition of The Rough Guide to World Music. When will that be out and just how large will it be?

We’re doing the book in three volumes, this time, and have just published the first, covering Africa and the Middle East. We’re now in the midst of the second volume, which ranges through Europe, Asia and the Pacific. Then next year we’ll tackle the Americas and the Caribbean. All in all, I think it will weigh in at about 2000 pages and a million words, and will have contributions from around 25 people. It’s a bit of a nightmare but is the book I’m most proud of publishing!

I also read that you never learned to drive. Does this mean that you are always automatic DJ on road trips?

Yes – I’m a pretty good DJ. But when I’m traveling, I tend to use local transport as much as possible. I like getting around on local buses and trains and of course those Greek ferries. I like walking, too!

Rough Guides began in travel publishing, but has blossomed into a diversified information company with reference guides that cover all kinds of topical and timely issues. Moving forward, how will Rough Guides continue to distinguish itself from other guidebook companies also moving in this direction?

We’ll try and stay ahead of the game! Our first success outside travel was a guide to the Internet – destination everyone needed to master. And since then we’ve done a whole range of music and film and computer and popular culture books. We’ve turned our hand to science recently, with books on the brain and genes, and a guide to Climate Change, that was recently shortlisted for the Science Book of the Year Award.

And with an increasing amount of content available online, how will new technologies impact Rough Guides? Are podscrolls, podcasts and downloadable material the Rough Guides of the future, or will there always be a need to provide travelers with books?

Books are very handy and I think they’ll be with us for some time. But travel guidebooks will be the first things to migrate once there is a really good (and cheap) electronic reader. We produce all our books as PDFs before sending them to the printers, and they are ready to roll on a reader, with all their weblinks live so you can go straight to explore a hotel or restaurant website, or see who is playing at a local festival. I do think that’s the future. And it is getting quite close!

Absolutely. But even as all these new technologies revolutionize the way we read, it’s hard to beat the experience of casually browsing the shelves from time to time, especially while traveling. Can you tell us about one or two of your favorite new or used bookstores that you like to visit, either at home or that you’ve come across in your travels?

The best bookshop in the world is Daunts on Marylebone High Street in London. This was a purpose built Victorian bookshop and it has a lantern roof and gallery, with natural light for reading. It has a fantastic travel section, with books of all kinds – guides, travel books, novels, art books – all arranged by country. My favorite secondhand bookshop is Serendipity in Berkeley, California, which is a treasure house of twentieth century fiction.

Thanks Mark! We look forward to more great travel books and innovative reference information from Rough Guides in the years to come.

Individual Rough Guides 25 books retail for $5.99 each.

Okay, now to the contest — We have ONE copy of the complete set of Rough Guides 25 to give away to ONE lucky Gadling reader! Just leave a comment below and our magical system will automatically select a single random winner — but make sure you use a valid email address, as we’ll have to contact you to get your mailing address. For official rules, please click here. Comments and contest will close one week from today, May 30 at 8:00 PM.