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American Pilgrim
Just a quick heads-up to let everyone know that “American Pilgrim,” my TV hosting debut for the Travel Channel, will debut tonight at 11pm EST, 8pm PST. This traditional, Thanksgiving-themed show, which I briefly described for my Marco Polo Didn’t Go There book tour diary at Gadling, is listed on the Travel Channel schedule with the caption, “Host Rolf Potts explores the journey and the legacy of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers.” Oddly enough, I’ll miss the TV debut myself, as I’ll be reading at 7:30 tonight at Distant Lands books in Pasadena, CA.
Speaking of my book tour, this Los Angeles-area event means the tour is almost over! After a brief return to Kansas later this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll return to the West Coast on December 6th to appear at Bootsnall.com’s 10th anniversary party in Portland, Oregon. Come on out and join me for this very cool event!
On a final book tour related note, my apologies for the above-mentioned book-tour diary at Gadling, which petered out after the London entry. While I enjoyed writing it from the road, I frequently found that I didn’t have enough time to focus on it properly — and since one only goes on book tour every five years or so, I decided to spend my spare time having fun and meeting friends and readers instead of sitting indoors in front of my laptop. Later next month, I’ll post some belated book tour dispatches here and/or at Gadling, so everyone can get caught up on what I’ve been up to.
In the meantime, don’t forget that Marco Polo Didn’t Go There and Vagabonding both make great Christmas presents for travel-happy friends and family!
Just a quick note here to let you know that the “virtual book tour” for my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is underway. It started with a Q&A at Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Work Week and Lifestyle Design Blog, and will continue with a series of Q&As and short essays on a number of great travel blogs over the course of two weeks. I’ve listed rundown of these “virtual book tour” blog stops by date below.
You’ll also want to check out the page I’ve set up for my nationwide book tour — which starts in Kansas and will hit nearly 20 U.S. cities before it ends in southern California just before Thanksgiving. Come on out and see me in places like Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles! If you can’t make it in person, I’ll be keeping a book tour blog at Gadling starting September 29th.
In other book-release news, Pauline Frommer interviewed me about Marco Polo Didn’t Go There for her “Travel Show” on WOR Radio yesterday (to listen, click “Hour 2″ of the September 14th show).
Here’s the rundown on the virtual book tour:
Tues Sept 16
Budget Travel’s This Just In Blog
Wed Sept 17
BootsnAll.com blogs and boards
Thurs Sept 18
Vagabondish
Fri Sept 19
The Lost Girls’ blog
Mon Sept 22
Matador Pulse
Tues Sept 23
Brave New Traveler
Wed Sept 24
Jaunted.com
Thurs Sept 25
National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel Blog
Fri Sept 26
Gadling.com
Last week, when I announced that my new book is available for sale at Amazon.com, a number of readers wrote in to tell me that they’d also found copies of it in the travel sections of their local bookstores. The book was initially scheduled to launch on September 15th, but — hey — since it’s already for sale everywhere, why not just say it’s launching today?
So there you have it: Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is officially released!
The subtitle to the book is “Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer,” and the story collection is just that — a look back at my boldest, funniest, and most revealing travel-writing adventures from the past 10 years. Unlike, say, essay collections from David Sedaris, Anne Lamott or Chuck Klosterman (or even Tim Cahill), however, each of my stories also contains a “commentary track” — endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. The result, I believe, is more than just an entertaining literary journey into fascinating corners of the world — it’s also an offbeat travel-writing textbook, as each story is offset by an annotated peak into its own creation. The intro chapter (which explains, for example, why I use a word like “postmodern” in the subtitle) can be accessed online from the Travelers’ Tales promo page for the book.
By next week I hope to add a unique Marco Polo Didn’t Go There page at RolfPotts.com, complete with reviews, sample chapters, and a finalized book-tour event listing. For now, I’m posting my tentative book tour schedule below, covering the metro areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, Topeka, Wichita, and Salina. [Montreal, San Diego, Baltimore, and DC might be added later, depending on scheduling issues.] As was the case for Vagabonding in 2003, Bootnsall Travel Network will be co-sponsoring many of the events on this book tour.
I also hope to visit some book clubs during my tour, though I don’t have a specific plan on just how I’m going to do this. So if you have a book club (or if you want to create one to coincide with my tour) and it looks like I’ll be in your general area, send me an email and let’s see if we can’t set something up.
My online “virtual book tour” will start next Monday, September 15th, and will feature book-related reviews, Q&As, and short essays on select travel blogs. After the virtual tour finishes, I’ll be writing regular road-dispatches for Gadling as my real-world book tour makes its way around North America.
For now, my tentative 2008 Marco Polo Didn’t Go There book tour information is as follows:
For early press on Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, check out recent articles in the Salina Journal, Canada’s National Post, or (if you can read Italian) Italy’s La Repubblica.
Having been on the road in Africa, Europe and North America since late May, it’s been hard to keep up with various non-travel events in my life (including many of my inbox messages — sorry if I’ve been slow in replying to email lately). Hence, I almost missed it when my new book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, suddenly appeared in stock at Amazon.com a few days ago. Since the book doesn’t officially release in most bookstores until mid-September, this caught me off-guard.
Nonetheless, I’m happy to see my new book on sale (better early than late, to be sure) and if you’re an Amazon.com shopper, I encourage you to check it out! I’ll have a more formal announcement of the Marco Polo Didn’t Go There book release (including book tour info for places like Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Wichita, Salina, New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) in coming days. For now, its Amazon page has some decent introductory information. And, interestingly enough, my first piece of tie-in press about the book appeared in Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper (of all places) a few days ago.
Here is some more Rolf news from recent weeks and months:
One of my favorite things about teaching writing at the Paris American Academy every summer is the chance to see our students find success in print, onstage, and onscreen in the months and years that follow. A number of Paris writing students from 2006 and 2007 have recently debuted new work in venues around the world. Here are some examples (and unless otherwise noted, they are all students from 2007):
On a final note, I’ll note that registration is still open for the July 2008 session of the Paris American Academy writing workshop, and we welcome new applicants! For more information,, check out our official website here.
As I mentioned a couple weeks back, I have a new travel book coming out this fall. Entitled Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, this book will likely debut in September, and I will go on the road to promote it in October and November. Right now I plan on hitting various bookstores, writing conferences, and universities in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey.
Might you have some suggested stops and venues for me in these places? Are there other parts of the U.S. or Canada that might make a good stop on my book tour? If so, let me know by emailing me directly! (My address is under “contact” in the index bar at left.)
In addition to standard readings from my new book (as well as Vagabonding), I’m also game to do short talks or seminars on travel writing and/or long-term travel — especially at universities and book festivals. I welcome your suggestions!
The past several months have kept me busy with both travel and writing, and it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged about my various personal projects. Here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to:
Travelers Tales recently released a great new anthology, Encounters With the Middle East, which is based on a simple (yet very worthy) premise: To humanize the people behind the news headlines in a turbulent and misunderstood part of the world. “A dizzying amount of media coverage bombards us from the Middle East,” editors Jim Bowman and Nesreen Khashan write in the introduction, “yet little filters through about the experiences of ordinary people. Encounters with the Middle East tells their stories through interactions with 30 writers who go beyond the usual reporting to reveal the simple and poignant ways that life goes on.”
My Jordan-based essay “Dancing at the Blood Festival” is featured in the collection, which also includes essays from all corners of the Middle East from writers such as Jeff Greenwald, Murad Kalam, and Michel Moushabeck. In the opening pages, Bowman and Khashan point out the importance of engaged travel reportage in that part of the world:
When we don’t connect people to the greater global scheme that includes us, we consign ourselves to the images presented on television. In that way, we become myopic and abandon all the moments that represent the complexity of lives in the Middle East. While those experiences remain hidden from our view, we remain deficient by failing to see them. When we are unaware of other possibilities, how then can we imagine solutions to the global challenges that face us?
More information about the book can be found here.
[Above, noblemen play Jeu de Paume in 16th century Paris.]
My latest article for The Smart Set, “Jurassic Tennis,” recounts a journey into a lesser-known corner of Paris to play the ancient French racquet sport of Jeu de Paume. Though similar in many ways to modern tennis, Jeu de Paume is a far more complex and technical sport. Played on an indoor court featuring angled walls and netted windows, the game favors precision ball-placement and mental strategies akin to a fast-paced game of chess.
At its popular peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, this Ur-tennis game had an influence on everything from commerce, to social codes, to gambling. As with baseball in mid-20th century America, Jeu de Paume provided the metaphorical vernacular of this era: Mathematicians illustrated theorems with Jeu de Paume gambling probabilities; devout poets used the game to dramatize God and Satan volleying for souls. Those poets less inclined to metaphysics used the four-point Jeu de Paume scoring system as a euphemism for sexual accomplishment (much like the four bases of baseball are used today).
The full article, which is as much a sports and history essay as it is a travel article, is online here.
Elsewhere online, my highly subjective list of favorite bookstores around the world recently appeared on National Geographic Traveler’s Intelligent Travel blog — and in the TV world, I make a “talking head” appearance (alongside a number of other travel writers) this month on a Travel Channel special called “25 Mind Blowing Escapes.”
It’s once again winter holiday season, and once again I’ll remind everyone that a copy of Vagabonding makes a great holiday gift for:
To pick up copies of Vagabonding as stocking-stuffers, hit your local bookstore, or try the following online services:
