What is Eastern Europe, and does it still exist? Jacob Mikanowski set out to answer these questions and more in his book "Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land". In this episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, he shares how his Polish heritage, academic background, and personal travels shape his work.

Staying in Warsaw at the tail end of communism, Jacob lived through Poland's transition from sleepy empty streets to the chaotic capitalism of the 1990s. He has since traveled across nearly every Eastern European country, exploring both their nuances and shared identities.

His book is a personal farewell to an Eastern Europe that feels lost to history. Drawing on real anecdotes, he brings to life forgotten traditions, hidden secrets, and the cultural richness of an often-overlooked region. In our conversation, we consider what “Eastern Europe” really means, why the term remains controversial, and why Jacob believes its identity deserves to be reclaimed.

A contributor to the New York Times, National Geographic, BBC Travel, and Lonely Planet (to name a few), David Farley is living the travel writing dream. When his career was just starting, though, he didn't have a direct line to any editors; he had to prove himself. In this episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, he maps his rise from amateur to regular contributor to the biggest publications. This is your chance to learn how to get your foot in the door. Before you know it, you could be sent around the world to cover stories that will be read by thousands.

Dustin Grinnell's personal essays go deep into his psyche, exposing wounds and aspirations from deepest childhood, wrestling with illness, relationships, authority, and disappointments. While travel publications like Intrepid Times can be reluctant to publish these kinds of deeply personal memoirs/reflections (or, as Dustin calls it, autoethnography) Dustin's stories have achieved recognition and a wide audience, being published in Outside Magazine, Perceptive Travel, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Enquirer, and elsewhere. Dustin achieved this while maintaining a decades-long career as a marketing writer for major corporations and institutions.

On the latest episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Dustin talks about balancing his creative travel writing and introspective essays with his copywriting day job, how he makes his personal essays interesting and appealing to a wide audience, and the many lessons he has learned from writing, reading, and travel. Listen here on Intrepid Times or subscribe on Spotify or iTunes Dustin's book, published by Peter Lang, is Lost & Found, Reflections on Travel, Career, Love, and Family. It is available now.

Despite its UNESCO World Heritage medieval old city, Moorish cisterns, and delicious jamon iberico, Cáceres‎ in Spain's Extremadura still somehow manages to cling to that most overused of adjectives, 'untouched.' As tourists continue to swarm to Barcelona and Ibiza, Cáceres‎ gets on with the mysteries of normal life in one of Europe's best-preserved medieval towns.

Troy Nahumko has been based in Cáceres for over a decade. A fluent Spanish speaker, he set out to unravel the mysteries of this ancient, storied, yet little-visited region of Spain. The result is Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain published by the University of Alberta Press.

In the latest episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Troy talks about getting the story behind the story in Cáceres‎, establishing himself as a travel writer, writing in both English and Spanish, getting his initial stories published in both languages, and the publishing journey and reactions to his book both at home and abroad. Listen here on Intrepid Times or on Spotify or iTunes.

The travel writing career has captivated many with the dream of scrawling notes on exotic train rides, sending off your narratives to venerable magazines, and collecting enough in fees and royalties to keep the journey going. But is that really what the life of a professional travel writer looks like today? Tim Leffel has been a full-time, professional travel writer since 2006 and literally wrote the book on the travel writing career, Travel Writing 2.0. In our conversation, he describes his own journey and gives an honest, no-nonsense overview of how today's travel writers actually go about earning money, growing their income, and paying the bills.

When Ryan Murdock moved to Malta in 2011, he intended to write a "breezy island novel" replete with quirky characters and sun-soaked tranquility. He would go on to write a book, but it was not the one he imagined. In a book that is part thriller, but anthropological examination, and part tribute to the pioneering Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Ryan told a gripping tale that all serious readers of travel writing need to have on their shelves.

In 2015, having recently left her job at the International Bar Association, Rebecca Lowe was transitioning to freelance journalism. Aiming to collect stories from the Middle East to help build her new career path, she set out on an 11,000km, 20-country solo cycle ride from London to Tehran, via Europe, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Oman, the UAE, and Iran. The journey lasted a year, and collect stories she did. While she didn't originally intend for the journey to lead to a book, when the opportunity arose, she took on the project and wrote The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year. This podcast episode focuses on both her incredible journey through the Middle East and the book that came out of it.

During the episode, Rebecca talks about how she approached the idea of risk vs. recklessness as a solo female traveler, what traveling through the Middle East as a woman was really like, the highs and lows of her journey, how she balanced out the seriousness of the problems facing the Middle East with a healthy sense of humor, and more.

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Travel tends to offer rewarding, enlightening, and overall joyful experiences. We come out of them with fresh perspectives, new friends, and an increased understanding of our place in the world. But sometimes, travel is hard. It walks us into experiences that are frustrating, saddening, disappointing, or even dangerous. Once we've gone through these experiences, we may feel compelled to get them down on paper, to share them. Is there a good reason to do that? And if so, how do we cut through the emotional turmoil of the experience to get at the real story? These are the questions we tried to tackle on this week's episode of The Travel Writing Podcast.

During the episode, we talk about why waiting a while after an experience can benefit the emotional process that needs to take place before writing, the reason negative travel experiences beg to be written, how we can imagine the experiences in a new light, how one can go about editing a story based on a negative travel experience, and more.

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Inspired by a new translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, Laura Coffey set off for an Italian island in order to find a renewed sense of freedom and clarity in the midst of extreme loneliness. What was supposed to be a short break turned into a six-month journey across towns and islands in Italy, Croatia, and Spain as she chased the myth of The Odyssey. Her attempt to live between myth and reality allowed her to cope with her father's worsening health, and the journey turned into her first travel memoir, Enchanted Islands: Travels Through Myth & Magic, Love & Loss.

In this episode of The Travel Writing Podcast, I spoke with Laura about her island journey and the resulting memoir. During the interview, we talk about how Laura developed her writing while working her day job in tech start ups, why myths and legends can so easily help us escape when the world feels strange and unreal, how Laura brought the joy of travel into a book that touches on some very sad moments, and more. For anyone who has struggled with grief and sadness, this episode offers a nuanced look at how we can learn to trust ourselves in the face of life's hardest moments.

Over the years, Mike Richards has been to over 150 countries, has written global political and economic research for renowned global research houses, and has become a meditation teacher. During his years of traveling, he's come to a simple conclusion: most people are good.

In this episode of The Travel Writing Podcast, Nathan spoke with Mike about his new book, how traveling with his young daughter has helped him rediscover a sense of wanderlust, how a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan opened his eyes to people’s true natures, how his work as a risk analyst shapes his travel experiences, what he’s learning about connection and community through his travels to unlikely places, and much more.

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