2022-23 SATW Foundation Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition
128 Short Narrative ( Travel Audio-Podcasts and Guides,Travel Audio-Radio,Travel Magazines,Travel Coverage in General Magazines,Newspapers)Back
Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Pico Iyer Entry Title: The Holy Mountain Entry Credit: Pico Iyer Judge Comment: Illustrating the power of short narrative, well-known travel writer Pico Iyer brings readers to the pandemic bedside of his mother in a California hospital while he climbs a Japanese mountainside to consider the conundrum of life and death. Atop the mountain where cedars surround Buddhist temples and hundreds of thousands of graves, he puzzles over his understanding of mortality and how that, as he writes, “moved me to think about how to live” — and how to love.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Jared Diamond Entry Title: The Joy of Traveling to the Same Places Again and Again Entry Credit: Tara Isabella Burton Judge Comment: Fueled by wanderlust, novelist Tara Isabella Burton as a young woman roamed the globe to satisfy her longing to be somewhere other than where she was at any given moment. As she grew older, she changed. She now relishes returning to places she knows: to sit in a familiar café or walk the paths from vineyard to vineyard she has known over the years, in Italy or Slovenia or the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. She’d rather not strike out for unexplored locales, instead to go back repeatedly to those places where she finally feels the most at home.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: LARRY BLEIBERG Entry Title: Mt. Atlanticus, a Myrtle Beach Mini Golf Masterpiece Entry Credit: Larry Bleiberg Judge Comment: Join Larry Bleiberg on a trip to South Carolina to what is considered a masterpiece of putt-putt golf courses, the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of a now-deceased noted designer of quirky courses. Bleiberg and his college-aged son, Harrison, negotiate 36 holes that wind into a former department store. More than sand traps aim to thwart their Myrtle Beach putts, where Atlantis has washed ashore bringing an alien race of UFO devotees ruled by a minotaur. The difficult course in many ways, Bleiberg writes, mirrors the travails of life.
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Condé Nast Traveler Entry Title: Finding Community, Joy, and a New Sense of Self at Gay Ski Week Entry Credit: Todd Plummer Judge Comment: Todd Plummer has loved to ski and is a lifelong homosexual, but he never wanted to participate in gay travel events. The pandemic changed everything about his hesitancy. Life is too short not to take some risks, he decided, including going to the famous British Columbia ski resort for the Whistler’s Pride & Ski Festival.
