Lowell Thomas and Laughing Hyenas

For the past four years, I've been privileged to have my stories appear in various travel award anthologies, including the Best American Travel Writing series -- but for some reason I've always been stymied by the Lowell Thomas Awards, the annual newspaper and magazine travel-section honors from the Society of American Travel Writers. In three successive years of entering the competition, I’d never once won Lowell Thomas honors – not even honorable mention. I thought this was again the case this year, as the late-summer announcement date for the winners came and went without a phone call from the SATW.

When I surfed over to the SATW website to see if any of my writer friends had won awards, however, I found out that my July 2002 National Geographic Traveler story “Room With a Skew” had won a Bronze Award in the Personal Comment category. Rick Mashburn of The New York Times and Cindy Loose of The Washington Post won the other two slots.

I also have the good fortune this month of appearing in the latest Traveler’s Tales humor anthology, Hyenas Laughed at Me, and Now I Know Why (and, unlike the SATW, the good folks at Traveler’s Tales informed me of this impending honor weeks ago). My tale is “Cowboys and Indians, Thai-Style”, and it joins humor tales from the likes of William Dalrymple, Elliott Hester, Richard Sterling, and Jennifer Leo. Tim Cahill wrote the introduction, which you can read online here.