2019-20 SATW Foundation Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition
113 Cultural Tourism ( Newspapers,Travel Magazines,Travel Coverage in General Magazines,Travel Audio-Radio,Travel Audio-Podcasts and Guides)Back
Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Pico Iyer Entry Title: A Journey into Greece's Land of a Thousand Stories Entry Credit: Pico Iyer Judge Comment: In this superbly written story, Pico Iyer retraces a trip he made 35 years prior to the island of Ithaca, the reputed home of Odysseus. As Iyer evocatively describes his excursions across Greece, readers are there with him on a “siesta-silent, sunlit afternoon,” in an “incense-haloed church” or atop “watchtower hilltops.” We hear the bells clanging, the cups rattling and see the cobalt sky as we step with him “out of the calendar into the realm of allegory.” This is no mere travel story, no list of perfunctory must-sees, but a journey of now, of then, of memory, “a place in which to fall asleep and wake, inexplicably clarified.”
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Amanda Castleman Entry Title: Love in a Time of Abundance Entry Credit: Amanda Castleman Judge Comment: An African safari transports writer Amanda Castleman into the changing culture of the Bushmen of Botswana while holding on to the grief of caring for recently deceased relatives back home. The story opens with a brave young man hunting a leopard to impress his fiancé’s family and switches to a scene of tourists trapped in a Land Rover with a dead battery as lions prevent their escape. Like an ancient African tale, the narrative is vivid with imagery, an emotional arc that carries the story and a conclusion that intertwines the culture of the Bushmen with Castleman’s acceptance of life’s inevitability.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Jeff MacGregor Entry Title: The Last of the Great American Hobos Entry Credit: Jeff MacGregor Judge Comment: Pairing the rich history of the hobo in American culture that began after the Civil War with the more than century long National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa, Jeff MacGregor fuses a disappearing way of life with a nostalgic celebration of the people who revere it. MacGregor’s detailed reporting and his descriptive prose bring his characters and their histories to life. He compares hobos to “seekers and pilgrims” of the past, to those who “give away everything to pass out of this world, or into heaven, untroubled.”
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Christopher P Baker Entry Title: The Ancient Guardians of the Earth Entry Credit: Christopher P. Baker Judge Comment: Colombia’s Arhuaco people live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, what the journal Science in 2013 named the most irreplaceable ecosystem on earth. The Arhuaco call themselves the “Elder Brothers” and are on a mission to inform the “Younger Brothers,” (us) that if we don’t change our ways, the world will die. Baker reverently tells the story of how three decades ago these isolated people realized climate change was impacting their lives and the cosmos so they went public, opening their culture and economy in order to warn the world of impending disaster. Baker’s respect, his reporting and vivid writing give this ecological morality tale its power and urgency.
