News & Opinion

Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards Winners

We're pleased to announce the winners of the Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year. Grand Prize winner Erin Byrne collected $1000 and the gold award for “Our Ravaged Lady,” her powerful evocation of Notre Dame Cathedral’s symbolism for generations of the French people and for herself personally. Amanda Castleman won the silver award and $750 for “Love in a Time of Abundance,” her poignant account of vanishing cultures and our own mortality on a safari in Botswana. Tom Miller and Chase Nelson shared the bronze award and $500, Tom for his inspirational profile of the “best guitar maker in Cuba” in “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop,” and Chase for his dramatic tale of life and death and conquest en route from Machu Picchu in “Dark Train to Cusco.” Here’s the complete list of winners. Read the Grand Prize Gold winning story in our Editors' Choice section.


Now Available: The Creative Spark

We're very excited about Michael Shapiro's latest collection of interviews, The Creative Spark, on the subject of creativity. In it he talks with 32 of our most inventive individuals from the worlds of music, literature, film, exploration, and cuisine about their process and what creativity means to them. Each chapter is prefaced by a short biography. Among those interviewed: Smokey Robinson • Barbara Kingsolver • Francis Ford Coppola • Jane Goodall • Amy Tan • David Sedaris • Graham Nash • Pico Iyer • Joan Rivers • Merle Haggard • Lucinda Williams • Frances Mayes • Judy Collins • Melissa Etheridge • Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson • Lyle Lovett • Robert Earl Keen • Dave Alvin • SF Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow • Jerry Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals • Ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro • and many more. Order a copy now!
Fourteenth Annual Solas Awards Winners2020-04-29T17:00:06-07:00

Now Available: The Creative Spark

We're very excited about Michael Shapiro's latest collection of interviews, The Creative Spark, on the subject of creativity. In it he talks with 32 of our most inventive individuals from the worlds of music, literature, film, exploration, and cuisine about their process and what creativity means to them. Each chapter is prefaced by a short biography. Among those interviewed: Smokey Robinson • Barbara Kingsolver • Francis Ford Coppola • Jane Goodall • Amy Tan • David Sedaris • Graham Nash • Pico Iyer • Joan Rivers • Merle Haggard • Lucinda Williams • Frances Mayes • Judy Collins • Melissa Etheridge • Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson • Lyle Lovett • Robert Earl Keen • Dave Alvin • SF Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow • Jerry Garcia Band keyboardist Melvin Seals •  Ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro • and many more. Order a copy now!

Now Available: The Creative Spark2020-02-06T08:22:47-08:00

The Girl Who Said No and Strange Tales of World Travel

We’re very excited about our early 2019 books The Girl Who Said No by Natalie Galli and Strange Tales of World Travel by Gina and Scott Gaille. Natalie Galli’s riveting memoir reveals the story of eighteen-year-old Franca Viola, who made history in 1966 as one of the first “#metoo” heroines of modern times, when she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Follow along with Galli as she brings this story to life and shares her observations of Sicilian culture. Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, and wherever they go they ask local people what’s the strangest experience they’ve ever had there. Strange Tales of World Travel presents 50 of these amazing stories.

The Girl Who Said No and Strange Tales of World Travel2019-09-30T17:18:37-07:00

Billy Gogan Sequel Launches Spring Books

We’re getting a jump on spring with the publication of Billy Gogan, Gone fer Soldier, book two in the Billy Gogan series from Solas House Fiction. Follow Billy’s adventures as he flees New York and joins the army and lands in the Mexican-American War where he becomes an aide to the young officer Ulysses S. Grant. Later this spring look for Strange Tales of World Travel by Gina and Scott Gaille (with a foreword by Don George), who recount fifty of the most amazing stories they’ve been told in travels to more than 100 countries. Then get ready for The Girl Who Said No, Natalie Galli’s exploration of Sicily in search of the woman who broke a 1000-year-old Sicilian tradition by refusing to marry her abductor.

Solas Awards Winners Announced

Congratulations to the winners of the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Story of the Year. Grand Prize winner David Robinson collected $1000 for “The Mystery of the Sahara,” his poignant evocation of a place and a person both shrouded in mystery. Matthew Félix won the silver award and $750 for “The Citroën and the Pomegranate,” his engaging account of an astonishing set of coincidences on his travels from Istanbul to Barcelona to Hvar. Sivani Babu took the bronze and $500 for “The House on KVR Swamy Road,” her moving reflection on family life and the passage of time on a visit to her grandparents’ house in Rajahmundry, India.
Billy Gogan Sequel Launches Spring Books2019-03-14T14:45:52-07:00

Pick Up a Copy

All of our books are available for order on Indiebound, Amazon, or at your favorite bookstore. Our newest book is The China Option by Sophia Erickson, a guide for Millennials to find success, and pay off student debt, by teaching in China. Late summer brought Conner Gorry's 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go, the latest in our popular 100 Places for Women series. Earlier in the year we released Tania Romanov's Mother Tongue, her poignant memoir of life stretching from the Balkans to San Francisco and back again over three generations. That was followed by Carla Gambescia's La Dolce Vita University, an unconventional guide to Italian culture that is witty, charming, whimsical, and loaded with fascinating insights, truly an A to Z experience. Then came James Michael Dorsey's Baboons for Lunch, a moving, powerful, and sometimes funny series of encounters with the world's remotest places and people.

Pick Up a Copy2019-02-26T11:25:14-08:00