by Jason Wilson
Kimberly Meyer has written for Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Oxford American, Georgia Review, Agni, Southern Review, Brain, Child, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge, and Third Coast. Currently she teaches in a great books program in the Honors College at the University of Houston and is at work on a book about the recent journey in which she and her daughter retraced the medieval pilgrimage route of Felix Fabri, a Dominican friar from Germany who traveled to the Holy Land and St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert in 1483.
Monte Reel is the author of Between Man and Beast: A Tale of Exploration and Evolution, which will be published in 2013. His first book, The Last of the Tribe, came out in 2010. Previously he was the South America correspondent for the Washington Post. He and his family currently split their time between Chicago and Buenos Aires.
Henry Shukman is a prizewinning poet and novelist. His most recent novel, The Lost City (2009), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and two sons.
Thomas Swick is the author of two books: a travel memoir, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler. He has written for a number of publications, including Missouri Review, American Scholar, North American Review, Oxford American, Wilson Quarterly, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Smithsonian, and Afar. This is his fifth appearance in The Best American Travel Writing.
Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include A Dead Hand, The Mosquito Coast, and most recently The Lower River, and his renowned travel books include Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and Dark Star Safari. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.
Kenan Trebincevic was born in a town called Brcko in 1980 to a Bosnian Muslim family that was exiled in the Balkan war. He came to the United States in 1993, went to college in Connecticut, and became an American citizen in 2001. He works as a physical therapist in Greenwich Village and lives in Astoria, Queens, amid 10,000 other former Yugoslavians. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the International Herald Tribune, on the New York Times op-ed page and Salon.com, and on an American Public Media radio show called Bosnia Unforgiven. He is currently coauthoring a memoir about his exile called The Bosnia List.
Iraq veteran turned journalist Elliott D. Woods is a contributing editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review. His VQR-sponsored website, Assignment Afghanistan, won the 2011 National Magazine Award for multimedia, and his essay “Digging Out,” about the economic potential of Afghanistan’s mineral reserves, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in reporting. Woods’s work has also been honored by the Overseas Press Club of America. His writing and photography have appeared or are forthcoming in Granta, BusinessWeek, Mother Jones, GQ, Outside, Time, Slate, and the New York Times. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Notable Travel Writing of 2011
SELECTED BY JASON WILSON
CAROLINE ALEXANDER
The Man Who Took the Prize. National Geographic, September.
ELIF BAUTMAN
The View from the Stands. The New Yorker, March 7.
J. S. BROWN
The Codeine of Jordan. Bellevue Literary Review, Fall.
DAVE DENISON
Your Total Strike Feeling. The Atlantic, November.
GEOFF DYER
Poles Apart. The New Yorker, April 18.
HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS
Our Own Apocalypse Now. WorldHum, March 7.
DAVID FARLEY
Bad “Carma.” WorldHum, August 11.
A Chip Off the Old Bloc. Afar, May/June.
MICHAEL FINKEL
Here Be Monsters. GQ, May.
JONATHAN FRANZEN
Farther Away. The New Yorker, April 18.
KEITH GESSEN
Nowheresville. The New Yorker, April 18.
Clare Morgana Gillis
What I Lost in Libya. The Atlantic, December.
ELENA GOROKHOVA
From Russia with Lies. New York Times Magazine, October 23.
S. C. GWYNNE
The Lost River of Divine Reincarnation. Outside, August.
ERIC HANSEN
The Killing Fields. Outside, August.
LEIGH ANN HENION
In the Glow of Night. Washington Post Magazine, September 18.
PICO IYER
From Eden to Eton. Harper’s Magazine, November.
SAKI KNAFO
Operation Iraqi Vacation. GQ, April.
ANDREW MCCARTHY
The Art of the Deal. National Geographic Traveler, January/February.
DAISANN MCLANE
Can Japan Recover? Slate, August 30.
LAWRENCE OSBORNE
A Pilgrimage of Sin. Harper’s Magazine, March.
EVAN OSNOS
The Grand Tour. The New Yorker, April 18.
TONY PERROTTET
The Secret City. Slate, December 5.
DAN SALTZSTEIN
Greek Paradise, Lost. WorldHum, September 21.
AMY LEE SCOTT
BabyLand. Southern Review, Spring.
NEIL SHEA
Under Paris. National Geographic, February.
GARY SHTEYNGART
The New Russia. Travel + Leisure, October.
JESSE SMITH
Let’s Put On an Air Disaster Drill! Smart Set, June 21.
SETH STEVENSON
Why Would Anyone Go to Burning Man? Slate, September 18.
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
The Last Wailer. GQ, January.
PATRICK SYMMES
Sand Storm. Outside, May.
DAMON TABOR
Like Butterflies in the Jungle. Harper’s Magazine, February.
GUY TREBAY
The Global Nomad. Travel + Leisure, October.
SIMON WINCHESTER
How Fast Can China Go? Vanity Fair, October.
About the Editors
WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN is the author of seventeen books, including Europe Central, winner of the National Book Award. He has also won the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Center / USA West Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
JASON WILSON writes the spirits column for the Washington Post and is the editor of The Smart Set. His book, Boozehound, came out last year.