The Best American Travel Writing 2012 (37 page)

Bryan Curtis
is a staff writer at
Grantland
and a contributor to the
New York Times Magazine
and
Texas Monthly.
He travels frequently with the photographer Eric Roberts.

 

Aaron Dacytl
is a photographer, writer, adventurer, and train enthusiast. A 2010 graduate of Portland State University, he prefers to travel by freight train as well as to work seasonally. In his spare time he makes
Railroad Semantics,
a zine devoted to independent travel, railroad culture, and history. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.

 

Luke Dittrich
is a contributing editor at
Esquire,
where he writes on subjects ranging from lost atomic bombs to teenage hit men. His forthcoming book,
The Brain That Changed Everything,
is about Henry Molaison, who in 1958 underwent an experimental operation at the hands of Dittrich's grandfather. The operation obliterated Molaison's ability to create new memories, and Molaison went on to become the most important human test subject in the history of science, revolutionizing our understanding of how memory works. An
Esquire
article Dittrich wrote about Molaison is featured in the 2011 edition of
The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

 

Lynn Freed
's work has appeared in
The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, Southwest Review, Georgia Review,
the
New York Times,
the
Washington Post,
the
Wall Street Journal, National Geographic,
and
Narrative Magazine,
among others. She is the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/O. Henry Award, fellowships, grants, and support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Born in South Africa, she now lives in northern California.

 

J. Malcolm Garcia
is the author of
Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul
(2009) and
Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron's Ghost
(2012). His articles have been featured in
The Best American Travel Writing
and
The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

 

Michael Gorra
is the author of
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece
(2012). Winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for his work as a reviewer, he has taught English at Smith College since 1985. Earlier books include
The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany, After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie,
and, as editor,
The Portable Conrad.
An earlier essay appeared in
The Best American Travel Writing 2004.
Gorra lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter.

 

Peter Gwin
is a staff writer at
National Geographic.
His assignments have led him to the Sahara's largest Stone Age graveyard, the oldest known tyrannosaur, and Nazi U-boats sunk in the Gulf of Mexico. A native of Fayette County, Georgia, he is based in Washington, D.C.

 

Pico Iyer
is the author of two novels and eight works of nonfiction, including many found on the travel literature shelves—
Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, Falling Off the Map,
and
The Global Soul.
His most recent book,
The Man Within My Head,
which came out in early 2012, is about Graham Greene, hauntedness, and the moral and emotional conundrums that travel quite wonderfully throws up.

 

Mark Jenkins
is a seasoned climber, contributing writer for
National Geographic,
and former monthly columnist for
Outside
magazine. His books include
A Man's Life: Dispatches from Dangerous Places; The Hard Way: Stories of Danger, Survival, and the Soul of Adventure; To Timbuktu: A Journey Down the Niger;
and
Off the Map: Bicycling Across Siberia.
He has written for
Men's Health, Backpacker, Time, The Atlantic,
and other media.

 

Dimiter Kenarov
is a freelance journalist and contributing editor at the
Virginia Quarterly Review.
His work has appeared in
Esquire, Outside, The Nation,
the
International Herald Tribune,
the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and
Boston Review,
among others. He currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey.

 

Robin Kirk
is the author of three books, including
More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War on Colombia
(2004) and
The Monkey's Paw: New Chronicles from Peru
(1997). She is the coeditor of
The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics
(2005) and coedits Duke University Press's World Readers series. Kirk's essay “Best Ever Dog” was featured in the summer 2010
Oxford American
's “Best of the South” issue. An award-winning poet, Kirk also won the 2005
Glamour
magazine nonfiction contest with her essay on the death penalty. For twelve years she was a researcher with Human Rights Watch and covered Colombia and Peru. She teaches at Duke University.

 

Kimberly Meyer
has written for
Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Oxford American, Georgia Review, Agni, Southern Review, Brain, Child, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge,
and
Third Coast.
Currently she teaches in a great books program in the Honors College at the University of Houston and is at work on a book about the recent journey in which she and her daughter retraced the medieval pilgrimage route of Felix Fabri, a Dominican friar from Germany who traveled to the Holy Land and St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Desert in 1483.

 

Monte Reel
is the author of
Between Man and Beast: A Tale of Exploration and Evolution,
which will be published in 2013. His first book,
The Last of the Tribe,
came out in 2010. Previously he was the South America correspondent for the
Washington Post.
He and his family currently split their time between Chicago and Buenos Aires.

 

Henry Shukman
is a prizewinning poet and novelist. His most recent novel,
The Lost City
(2009), was a
New York Times
Editor's Choice. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and two sons.

 

Thomas Swick
is the author of two books: a travel memoir,
Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland,
and a collection of travel stories,
A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler.
He has written for a number of publications, including
Missouri Review, American Scholar, North American Review, Oxford American, Wilson Quarterly, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Smithsonian,
and
Afar.
This is his fifth appearance in
The Best American Travel Writing.

 

Paul Theroux
is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include
A Dead Hand, The Mosquito Coast,
and most recently
The Lower River,
and his renowned travel books include
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
and
Dark Star Safari.
He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

 

Kenan Trebincevic
was born in a town called Brcko in 1980 to a Bosnian Muslim family that was exiled in the Balkan war. He came to the United States in 1993, went to college in Connecticut, and became an American citizen in 2001. He works as a physical therapist in Greenwich Village and lives in Astoria, Queens, amid 10,000 other former Yugoslavians. His work has appeared in the
New York Times Magazine
and the
International Herald Tribune,
on the
New York Times
op-ed page and
Salon.com,
and on an American Public Media radio show called
Bosnia Unforgiven.
He is currently coauthoring a memoir about his exile called
The Bosnia List.

 

Iraq veteran turned journalist
Elliott D. Woods
is a contributing editor at the
Virginia Quarterly Review.
His
VQR
-sponsored website, Assignment Afghanistan, won the 2011 National Magazine Award for multimedia, and his essay “Digging Out,” about the economic potential of Afghanistan's mineral reserves, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in reporting. Woods's work has also been honored by the Overseas Press Club of America. His writing and photography have appeared or are forthcoming in
Granta, BusinessWeek, Mother Jones, GQ, Outside, Time, Slate,
and the
New York Times.
He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

S
ELECTED BY
J
ASON
W
ILSON

 

C
AROLINE
A
LEXANDER

The Man Who Took the Prize.
National Geographic,
September.

 

E
LIF
B
AUTMAN

The View from the Stands.
The New Yorker,
March 7.

J. S. B
ROWN

The Codeine of Jordan.
Bellevue Literary Review,
Fall.

 

D
AVE
D
ENISON

Your Total Strike Feeling.
The Atlantic,
November.

G
EOFF
D
YER

Poles Apart.
The New Yorker,
April 18.

 

H
ALEY
S
WEETLAND
E
DWARDS

Our Own Apocalypse Now.
WorldHum,
March 7.

 

D
AVID
F
ARLEY

Bad “Carma.”
WorldHum,
August 11.

A Chip Off the Old Bloc.
Afar,
May/June.

M
ICHAEL
F
INKEL

Here Be Monsters.
GQ,
May.

J
ONATHAN
F
RANZEN

Farther Away.
The New Yorker,
April 18.

 

K
EITH
G
ESSEN

Nowheresville.
The New Yorker,
April 18.

Clare Morgana Gillis

What I Lost in Libya.
The Atlantic,
December.

E
LENA
G
OROKHOVA

From Russia with Lies.
New York Times Magazine,
October 23.

S. C. G
WYNNE

The Lost River of Divine Reincarnation.
Outside,
August.

 

E
RIC
H
ANSEN

The Killing Fields.
Outside,
August.

L
EIGH
A
NN
H
ENION

In the Glow of Night.
Washington Post Magazine,
September 18.

 

P
ICO
I
YER

From Eden to Eton.
Harper's Magazine,
November.

 

S
AKI
K
NAFO

Operation Iraqi Vacation.
GQ,
April.

 

A
NDREW
M
C
C
ARTHY

The Art of the Deal.
National Geographic Traveler,
January/February.

D
AISANN
M
C
L
ANE

Can Japan Recover?
Slate,
August 30.

 

L
AWRENCE
O
SBORNE

A Pilgrimage of Sin.
Harper's Magazine,
March.

E
VAN
O
SNOS

The Grand Tour.
The New Yorker,
April 18.

 

T
ONY
P
ERROTTET

The Secret City.
Slate,
December 5.

 

D
AN
S
ALTZSTEIN

Greek Paradise, Lost.
WorldHum,
September 21.

A
MY
L
EE
S
COTT

BabyLand.
Southern Review,
Spring.

N
EIL
S
HEA

Under Paris.
National Geographic,
February.

G
ARY
S
HTEYNGART

The New Russia.
Travel + Leisure,
October.

J
ESSE
S
MITH

Let's Put On an Air Disaster Drill!
Smart Set,
June 21.

S
ETH
S
TEVENSON

Why Would Anyone Go to Burning Man?
Slate,
September 18.

 

J
OHN
J
EREMIAH
S
ULLIVAN

The Last Wailer.
GQ,
January.

P
ATRICK
S
YMMES

Sand Storm.
Outside,
May.

 

D
AMON
T
ABOR

Like Butterflies in the Jungle.
Harper's Magazine,
February.

G
UY
T
REBAY

The Global Nomad.
Travel + Leisure,
October.

 

S
IMON
W
INCHESTER

How Fast Can China Go?
Vanity Fair,
October.

W
ILLIAM
T. V
OLLMANN
is the author of seventeen books, including
Europe Central,
winner of the National Book Award. He has also won the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Center / USA West Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.