Jen Leo interview at RolfPotts.com

This month at my RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page I interview Jennifer Leo, whose latest women’s travel humor anthology, Whose Panties are These?, comes out this month. In addition to doing PR and editing anthologies for Travelers Tales, Jen has written for Time, Lonely Planet, and Student Traveler. Her blog, Written Road, is a great resource for people hoping to learn the business of travel writing.

In the interview, Jen confesses that she learned her early travel chops through road-trips to Tijuana as a teenager, traces her interest in travel writing back to Tim Cahill, and talks about her early years of employment with Travelers Tales. Here’s her advice for aspiring travel writers:

“Don’t be intimidated. If you want to become a travel writer, it is entirely within your reach. It’s not rocket science. Travel writing will only remain a dream job, if you keep it in your dreams. Acquire your bylines one by one, take classes from travel writers with solid experience, attend author events at local bookstores, and take advantage of the free resources around you. Web sites like WrittenRoad.com and Vagablogging.net are loaded with industry information that we’ve been willing to share. Also, don’t discount what’s available at your library. Bacon’s media guides in most library research sections will give you the contact information for travel magazines and newspapers. Do your homework on the publications you want to break into, and go for it. Again and again.”

Jen’s full interview online here.