This page features my favorite publishing moments and accomplishments from 2014 and 2015. This page is currently undergoing a massive reconstruction. The additions will be included in mid May 2015. For links to more recent works/awards, visit the Bio page.
Highlights: Literary and Travel Publications, Journals, and Websites
Travelers' Tales, literary travel anthology (book): Best Travel Writing 2014, January 2015. Story: The Bloom of Cancer. " Fifteen years ago, at a time when I thought my life would be taken either by cancer or by my own hand, I wrote a bucket list. I’d been ill for several years due to tumors growing like trees in my body, their branches twisting my organs until they stopped working. Many surgeries later, the tumors had all been removed except for small pieces, which I had hoped would die on their own. But instead they returned, stronger and hungrier, consuming everything, consuming me.My body was not owned by me during that time. I was only an anxious observer who worried about bills that lay unopened on the kitchen table next to printouts of platelet counts. Exhausted by medications, angered by doctors, I spent my days terrified, my nights in a dull, dreamless sleep...".
National Geographic Traveler India: Find the Heartbeat of Buenos Aires in the Recoleta Cemetery, November 2014. "Inside the coral pink, glowing city of Buenos Aires is a singular stone heart come to life, a world formed of cast marble and concrete. Outside this cool and calm place, is a steaming city swarming with neon, its geranium-studded balconies framed by shutters trembling to the sounds of tango and traffic..."
Lonely Planet, literary travel anthology (book): An Innocent Abroad, November 2014. Story: El Clavo. "The path before me stretches almost vertically, and my companions, a young girl who serves as my trail guide and a malnourished pack horse carrying our supplies, look as thought they cannot possibly complete the journey. Yet the three of us--the most unlikely of companions--seem to have found an alliance in one another as we walk quietly without stopping through a night which is filled with stars and stories. Each tree we pass, each star, each twist in the road, has a story to tell about the Ngabe. The hungry snake. The angry wife. The woman who looked at the moon....".
The Nervous Breakdown, Seraph, August 2014. (fiction) "End of summer, 1986. That was the September that I became an angel and went to Alabama. It had been a miserable summer, hot, full of vapid small town people I’d known my entire life. There was no escaping the sameness of it all, except to get a job, save money and leave. I’d found the most boring job possible for a teenager, working at the only movie theatre in town selling old candy at the concession stand. My middle-aged boss was adept at torturing his ragtag staff of adolescent girls, standing too close as we counted every single box of candy and penny at closing. Since I had dyslexia, this took hours, and he used this opportunity to occasionally put his hand on my inner thigh. Summer passed, sticky and in slow motion, and moved into September, which didn’t feel much different..."
BBC Travel, WordsnWanderlust, literary long form travel essay, The Bloom of Cancer, August 2014. This piece was chosen for the Travelers' Tales anthology above.
Mayday, From Lost to Loved in Bihar, July 2014. Republished from my website.
Highlights: Guest Blogging, Interviews and Guest Posts
Les Femmes Folles: Women in the Arts: An Interview with Amy Gigi Alexander, November 2014. " I identify as a woman and I write from that perspective. I think in travel writing in particular, women’s writing is often considered rather soft and insular—while men write the meaty travelogues involving danger and harsh conditions which lead to explorations. But this is not accurate—there are many women who write such narratives. My goals in travel writing, besides being a voice for women and their narratives, is to show that women—and the worlds they get access to—have just as much interest to men as stories by men. In fact, women and men often have different roles in foreign places, and it’s through these narratives of one another that we can experience places in new ways. So while gender defines some of the parameters of what a travel writer writes, it does not define what a reader reads..."
One Bike, One Year: Devi Lockwood: The Half Empty Bookshelf, October 2014. " Travel writing itself is often typecast as being a remnant from a worn out colonialism, but it’s not anymore. It is becoming a cross over genre: bleeding into memoir and fairy tales; creating mini manifestos on gender, politics and social ills; rubbing elbows with fiction and poetry. Travel writing is everywhere..."