Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Literary Travel Memoirs: Some Favorites

Apropos of the Literary Travel Writing Workshop I'll be offering this November 18th at the Bethesda MD Writers Center, a list of a few of my personal favorites:

David Haward Bain, Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines
Frances Calderon de la Barca, Life in Mexico
Bruce Berger, Almost an Island
Bill Buford, Among the Thugs
Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana
Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia
Ted Conover, Coyotes
Ted Conover, New Jack
Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
Charles Fergus, Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World
M.F.K. Fisher, Long Ago in France
Ian Frazier, Great Plains
Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu
Farley Mowat: Walking on the Land
Jan Morris: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere
V.S. Naipaul, A Turn in the South
Sheila Nickerson, Disappearance: A Map
Gontran de Poncins, Kabloona
Sam Quinones, True Tales from Another Mexico
Vikram Seth: From Heaven Lake, Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet
Sara Mansfield Taber, Dusk on the Campo: A Journey in Patagonia
Sara Mansfield Taber, Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf
John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez
Jon Swain, River of Time
Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
Sara Wheeler, Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica

(My own memoir is Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California the Other Mexico. It will be out in paperback this spring with Milkweed Editions.)