Gwendolyn Knapp is the author of the memoir After a While You Just Get Used to It: A Tale of Family Clutter. She currently resides in Houston, Texas, where she tends to her dozen plumerias, dreams up crazy stories, and is food editor for the Houston Press. Her work has appeared in the Oxford American, Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing, and elsewhere.
David Kushner is the author of several books, including Masters of Doom and Alligator Candy. A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, he has written for Outside, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other publications.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus is the author of A Sense of Direction, a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine, and a fellow at New America. He lives in New York.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of a number of award-winning and best-selling books, including The Wild Places, The Old Ways, and Landmarks. His work has been widely adapted for television, film, and radio, and he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the 2017 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award for Literature. He is presently finishing a book about underworlds, darkness, and knowledge called Underland.
Ann Mah, a frequent contributor to the New York Times travel section, is the author, most recently, of Mastering the Art of French Eating.
Alexis Okeowo is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is also a fellow at New America. Her book A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa will be released in October 2017.
Born in 1954, Tim Parks moved to Italy in 1981. Author of fifteen novels, including the Booker short-listed Europa, Destiny, and In Extremis, he has written three highly acclaimed travel books on his adopted home: Italian Neighbours, An Italian Education, and Italian Ways. He has also translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli, and Leopardi. Parks lives in Milan.
Shelley Puhak is an essayist and poet. Her essays have recently appeared in Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Review, and Salon. Puhak is also the author of two books of poetry, the more recent of which is Guinevere in Baltimore. She is writing a book about genealogy, genetics, and motherhood.
Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers is the author of the poetry collection Chord Box, which was a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Missouri Review, Boston Review, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A former Kenyon Review Fellow, she is the Murphy Visiting Fellow at Hendrix College and a contributing editor at the Kenyon Review.
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and a National Magazine Award for her article on seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest, “The Really Big One,” which was anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Magazine Writing. Previously, she was the book critic for New York Magazine, editor of the environmental magazine Grist, and a reporter and editor for the Santiago (Chile) Times. Schulz’s writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and she has reported from Central and South America, Japan, and the Middle East. Schulz received the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project) in 2004. A graduate of Brown University and a former Ohioan, Oregonian, and Brooklynite, she currently divides her time between the Eastern Shore of Maryland and New York’s Hudson Valley.
Wells Tower is the author of the short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. His short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, the Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, the Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from the Paris Review. He lives in North Carolina.
Reggie Ugwu is a features writer for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.
Kim Wyatt is the publisher of Bona Fide Books in South Lake Tahoe, California. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Alaska–Anchorage and has worked as a bunny girl, deckhand, and nurse. She currently teaches incarcerated students and is writing a memoir.
Notable Travel Writing of 2016
SELECTED BY JASON WILSON
DOMINIQUE BROWNING
The Days of Reveille and Taps. The New York Times, July 17.
AMY BUTCHER
Flight Behavior. American Scholar, Summer.
BRIN-JONATHAN BUTLER
Farewell, Champions of Havana. Roads & Kingdoms, September 30.
ALEXIS COE
Striking Out. The New Republic, April.
CHRIS COLIN
Pay Pal. AFAR, March/April.
TED CONOVER
On the Rails. T: The New York Times Style Magazine, November 13.
BRONWEN DICKEY
Climb Aboard, Ye Who Seek the Truth. Popular Mechanics, September.
DAVID FARLEY
A Path to Peace. AFAR, March/April.
KEVIN FEDARKO
Losing the Grand Canyon. National Geographic, September.
WILLIAM FINNEGAN
A Failing State. The New Yorker, November 14.
DOUGLAS FOX
Antarctic Dreams. Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring.
PORTER FOX
Everything Is Different on an Island. The New York Times, May 22.
MARK FRANEK
Soccer with Vikings. Roads & Kingdoms, June 24.
JONATHAN FRANZEN
The End of the End of the World. The New Yorker, May 23.
IAN FRAZIER
They Don’t Need Your Misty-Eyed Reverence. Outside, May.
SANDRA E. GARCIA
Dominican Roots: A Natural Hair Style. The New York Times, January 3.
DAVID GESSNER
The Taming of the Wild. American Scholar, Summer.
CALVIN GODFREY
The Dog Thief Killings. Roads & Kingdoms, February 2016.
ALICE GREGORY
Body of Work. The New Yorker, August 1.
JAKE HALPERN
The Nazi Underground. The New Yorker, May 9.
HOLLY HAWORTH
Places That Have No Names. Oxford American, Summer.
ANKER HEEGAARD
A Return to the Himalayas, in Memoriam. The New York Times, January 17.
JOHN LAHR
Hooker Heaven. Esquire, June/July.
MITCH MOXLEY
The Many Faces of Cao. The New York Times Magazine, July 17.
STEPHANIE PEARSON
For Those About to Rock. Outside, April.
TONY PERROTTET
Tourists Gone Wild. The New York Times, December 11.
Viva la Revolución. Smithsonian, October.
DAVID SEDARIS
The Perfect Fit. The New Yorker, March 28.
CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD
Solitude and the Sea. T: The New York Times Style Magazine, May 22.
PATRICK SYMMES
Aftershock. Outside, June.
PAUL THEROUX
Living in No Man’s Land. Smithsonian, October.
BILL THOMAS
Victory in Iowa. Washington Post Magazine, March 20.
JOE VEIX
Why I Quit My Job to Travel the World. NewYorker.com, June 6.
ANNA VODICKA
The Remnants of War. Longreads, January.
JIM YARDLEY
States of Confusion. The New York Times Magazine, November 6.
Visit www.hmhco.com to find all of the books in The Best American Series®.
About the Editors
LAUREN COLLINS, guest editor, is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of When in French: Love in a Second Language. She lives in Paris with her husband and daughter.
JASON WILSON, series editor, is the author of Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits. His next book, Godforsaken Grapes, will be published in spring 2018. Wilson has been the series editor of The Best American Travel Writing since its inception in
2000.
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The Best American Travel Writing 2017 Page 37