NEWS
Twentieth Annual Solas Awards Winners
Scores of entries in 20 categories kept the judges busy. As usual, not every story that deserved an award received one. Here’s the complete list of winners. Winning stories will be posted as Editors’ Choice stories on TravelersTales.com, and may appear in future Travelers’ Tales books.
Note: Participants often wonder about how to make their writing better, and for the first time, our guest judge is willing to provide feedback on your submission. (There’s a small fee to cover his time.) For more information, go to: sdcarpenter.com.
NEW BOOKS
The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13
AVAILABLE NOW!
Includes stories by Roxane Gay, Susan Orlean, Ann Hood, Faith Adiele, Marcia DeSanctis, and Pier Nirandara
The newest collection in this award-winning series from Travelers' Tales invites you to join twenty-seven inspiring and thoughtful writers as they traverse the planet, crisscrossing all seven continents and exploring the ways travel can illuminate, heal, inform, and transform a life. The essays probe themes as diverse as the locations, immersing us in experiences of kindness, adventure, nature, friendship, strength, marriage, motherhood, spirituality, the environment, belonging, healing, history, identity, romance, and resilience.
This beautiful and far-ranging collection helps us celebrate an appreciation for other cultures while proving that travel can be a profound gateway to connection, self-awareness, and an expanded worldview. As Lavinia Spalding writes in her introduction, “In times of turmoil and despair, it becomes more vital to pay attention to how much there is live for, and travel for, and stand up for, and the stories in this volume shine light on this.”
In The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13, you will:
- Embrace contradictions on the late-night tango floors of Argentina
- Splash toward a sexual awakening in the depths of a French swimming pool
- Hike the ups and downs of an active volcano and a marriage in Sicily
- Learn to surf and face cultural stereotypes in Hawaii
- Experience a different relationship with grief during Day of the Dead in Mexico
- Uncover the nuances of hair braiding in Nigeria and Morocco
- Explore the joys and challenges of motherhood in Qatar’s singing sand dunes
- ...and much more.
Strange Tales of World Travel, Volume 2
"What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen or experienced?”
Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, including many off-the-beaten-path places in Africa, South America, and Asia. Wherever they go, they ask this question. Everyone has a story, and some are truly extraordinary.
Strange Tales of World Travel, Volume 2 is the follow-up to the Gailles’ award-winning first volume. Their sequel entertains readers with 50 more thrilling, hilarious, heartbreaking encounters, including:
- Mr. Centenarian, the 111-year-old who attributes his longevity to drinking and bathing in a magical river
- Mr. Serengeti, who picked the wrong bush to relieve himself in while on safari
- The Refugee, who witnessed his friend get shot for begging a soldier to protect his family from approaching rebels
- Mr. Lucky to Live, who was scalped by an angry baboon
...and many more.
100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go – 5th Edition
“Makes me want to pack my bag and follow Van Allen’s alluring suggestions...she reveals an intimacy with Italy and a honed sense of adventure. Andiamo!” —Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun
This fully updated 5th Edition of 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go is packed with new information.
Fifteen years ago, the first edition of this book introduced readers to Susan Van Allen, a fun-loving, savvy traveler who helped them create the Italian trip of their dreams. In this fifth edition she returns to lead a femme-friendly ride up and down the boot, exploring the land where Venus (Vixen Goddess of Love and Beauty) and The Madonna (Nurturing Mother of Compassion) reign side-by-side. Enjoy masterpieces of art that glorify womanly curves, join a cooking class taught by revered grandmas, shop for ceramics and jewelry, ski the Dolomites, hike the Path of the Gods or paint a Venetian mask. Whatever your mood or budget, with this fifth edition of 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go, Italy opens her heart to you.
Paris Lost and Found
Following his hilarious introduction to Paris in French Like Moi, Midwesterner Scott Dominic Carpenter returns to the scene of the crime with more tales of intrigue.
This time, though, the story starts with sorrow as Carpenter's wife struggles with dementia. Humor may be the best medicine, but even the antics of a vandal in their building can’t cement the tiles of her memory for long. Before he expects it, the author finds himself alone in a capital that is also blighted by the pandemic.
It’s against this backdrop that the city comes roaring back to life. From bizarre encounters on the Metro to comical clashes with authority figures, and even a quixotic battle against a flock of migrant parrots, Paris Lost and Found unveils sides of the great city that are as quirky as they are authentic. With his unique blend of wit, insight, and wistfulness, Carpenter charts a path through his new labyrinth of solitude—only to emerge on the other side, squinting into the bright light of hope and new beginnings.
A Hard Place to Leave
Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award!
Vogue's Best Books of 2022
“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times
Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.
Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.
EDITORS’ CHOICE — This Week’s Story
Land of Wrenching Beauty
Ben Stubenberg
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Travel & Healing category
It’s our last night in Haiti, and nobody wants to leave. Spicy aromas from Creole lobster, shrimp, and red snapper caught that afternoon waft through the humid air and invite us to dine. We take our seats at the table set for us on the beach at the water’s edge under a black Caribbean sky strewn with a billion stars, bright and sharp in the absence of ambient light. A breeze blows in from the sea, and we let the serenity of the moment settle over us. Dr. John Brusky, an anesthesiologist who has led many of these surgical missions, taps his glass. All eyes look to him. Read full story