Jeff Biggers at RolfPotts.com

This month at the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page I interview Jeff Biggers, author of In the Sierra Madre and The United States of Appalachia : How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America. Here are some of the highlights from our Q&A:

• “One editor once told me: Either give me silly and irreverent, or give me deathly adventure. He obviously doesn’t travel much; probably hasn’t changed his haircut since 1975. I think there are a lot of readers out there who want more; who hunger for those unusual, wild, informed, truly funny and astonishing stories beyond the canyon walls, or down the back warrens, that are still waiting to be discovered. I think it’s important for those of us who love this genre, who love to travel, to keep pushing editors and publishers to widen the doors for diverse types of travel writing.”
• “Appalachia taught me a lot about the danger of outside travelers in perpetuating misinformation; few regions in the world have been so maligned by travel writers more interested in a quick and dirty piece rife with stereotypes.”
• “I often reread the contemporary masters, such as William Least Heat Moon, Colin Thubron, Jonathan Raban, Jan Morris — they show us how great travelers become great story tellers. I admire the work of a lot of younger writers, such as Tom Bissell, Peter Hessler, Jeffrey Tayler and stalwarts like Barry Lopez, Tom Miller, Sarah Wheeler. I think Beryl Markham’s West With the Night, about her sojourn in Africa, is one of the most breath-taking travel books ever written. I reread Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines every year, if only to remind myself about the beauty of wandering, and the possibilities for putting it into words.
• Do your homework, travel locally and know your own cultures and heritage like the back of your hand, learn languages, read a lot of history, read a lot of foreign novels, watch a lot of foreign movies, write about what you love with a sense of passion and purpose, don’t worry about getting published until you’ve learned the craft, and if at all possible, marry a foreigner, or, at the very least, date someone from each continent. And keep on traveling and crossing those borders.

Full Jeff Biggers interview online here.