I’m looking forward to my first Litquake in San Francisco. The 12th annual literary festival takes place Oct. 7-15 and features writers like James Ellroy and Thomas McGuane. It culminates in a big Lit Crawl around the Mission District. I’ll be reading Oct. 15 at Words on the Waves, an afternoon of events on Sausalito [...]

My summer kicked off with a great weekend at the TBEX travel blogging conference in Vancouver. In addition to hanging out with a fun group of writers and sampling a surprisingly tasty seaweed-topped hot dog (thanks, Japadog), I taught narrative travel writing with San Francisco Chronicle Travel Editor Spud Hilton and New York Times contributor [...]

One of the pleasures of living in San Diego is being a short drive from the Mexican border, and while I found myself visiting Tijuana less frequently as the drug war escalated in recent years, I never gave it up entirely. In fact, I crossed over not too long ago to have lunch at Carnitas [...]

Nice to see four World Hum stories included as notable selections in the new Best American Travel Writing anthology, just published. This year’s book was guest edited by Bill Buford, founder of Granta and author of the excellent memoir, “Heat.” The World Hum pieces honored in the book are: On the Perils of Travel Writing, [...]

I’m a big fan of travel writer Paul Theroux, whose books often chronicle train trips while exploring culture, politics, human nature, you name it, in a shrewd, unflinching way. And lately, I’ve been been reading another kind of train travel book, “The Little Engine That Could, ” to my daughter, who just turned 4. We [...]

Kind words from USA Network, which just gave World Hum its “Character Approved” stamp, reserved for “innovators in their field who are influencing our opinions, our style, and our view of the world.” From the website: Reading Worldhum is a different experience than reading a traditional travel magazine with lists of the best museums in [...]

I’ve arrived. I made this list. Now excuse me while I get back, soulfully, to my poetry.

I’ll be talking travel writing on both coasts this summer. First up: the Travel Blog Exchange’s two-day travel blogging conference, TBEX ’10, June 26-27 in New York City. I’ll be delivering a morning talk and discussing writing on a panel with writers and editors Don George, David Farley, Alison Stein Wellner and Michael Yessis. Then [...]

Praise for World Hum in the Australian: Founded in 2001 and tagged “dispatches from a shrinking planet”, World Hum promises “the best travel stories on the internet” and it often rises to the challenge (note that the quality is patchy and some writers are, well, city blocks ahead of others). But it’s an energetic and [...]