ExpatWomen:Ingrid, congratulations to you and your co-editors, Faith Conlon and Christina Henry de Tessan, on the publication in April this year of Go Your Own Way: Women Travel the World Solo – a wonderful book which showcases twenty-three writers’ stories of their solo travels. Can you please share with us a little background about the book and some of the book’s highlights?
Ingrid: In assembling the collection we really tried to show the multitude of reasons that women travel solo, as well as feature a large cross-section of women and different locales. And, of course, the strongest writing we could find. We divided up the hundreds of submissions, picked our favorites and then swapped. We also directly solicited essays by certain writers we knew. About half of the essays came from writers we contacted and the rest we found through the submission process. It was important to us to have original writing, so we included only a few reprints in the book.
I really feel like the collection is very strong and no one story or group of stories stands out to me as better than the others. As for a sampling, we have women traveling to far-flung locales like Borneo and Labrador, and others much closer to home, in places like Yosemite and Hawaii. We have women going for a variety of reasons, some for adventure, some as a pilgrimage of sorts -- whether to Iceland to walk in the footsteps of a hero or to Argentina to perfect the tango. We have women traveling at different points in their life, to mourn the end of a relationship, to mark the moment before marriage or children change their lives forever. Specifically, we have Jennifer Bingham Hull dodging bullets in revolutionary Nicaragua; Stephanie Elizondo Griest, who finds female friends invaluable in her journey through Uzbekistan; and Amy Balfour, who recounts a hilarious trek up Yosemite's Half Dome. Then there is Alice Carey, making new Egyptian friends on the streets of Cairo one year after 9/11; and Faith Adiele in Nigeria, where everyone knows her father, a man she has never met. Those are a few of the highlights.
ExpatWomen:The three of you published a similar book in 2001, A Woman Alone: Travel Tales from Around the Globe, which collated twenty-one women’s travel stories. Can you tell us more about how you met Faith and Christina – and how that first book came about?
Ingrid: Faith , Christina and I all worked together at Seal Press in Seattle. Faith was the publisher, Christina was the Production Editor and I worked in Marketing and Editorial. At the time, Seal had a successful line of books called Adventura that focused on women’s experiences with the outdoors. One of our most successful titles in that series was a book called Solo. It was a collection of essays by women on their experiences going solo in the outdoors. We realized this struck a cord with women because many of us want to go on adventures but we feel that we have to go with someone. There is a lot of fear around journeying of any kind for women alone.
Solo proved inspiring to women and gave them courage to venture into the wild alone. It made sense to us to then look at women’s solo travel next which is how we came up with the idea for A Woman Alone. We had all traveled solo in the recent past and felt the experience was a really important one to us personally and something we felt many women could benefit from. So we put out a call for submissions to all of our contacts and were just flooded with stories.
ExpatWomen:In the past six years since that first joint book, can you fill us in on some of your experiences, successes, challenges and lessons learned that came about as a direct result of the book?
Ingrid: Since I am a working editor, maybe there were less surprises editing both the first and second book than there would be for someone newer to the general process. I am always amazed at how connected the world of writers is, though. We sent out maybe 50 calls for submissions via email to individual writers and got back hundreds and hundreds of stories. The internet has just made this whole process easier and faster and has made it possible to connect writers with projects in a way that has just never before been seen. I was also amazed both times by how much this topic of women traveling solo resonated with people. We just got so many submissions and so many passionate ones. I thought it was interesting that with the first book the bulk of the essays focused on the novelty of a woman traveling alone--overcoming fears, the challenges of being a woman alone, and, of course, the unexpected joys. The second time, with the new book, in just seven years very few of the essays focused on that solely. It seemed there was a collective agreement that a woman traveling solo was not that new or different anymore, at least not to the point of basing an essay on it. In just seven years it seemed that a change had occurred and it wasn’t enough to have just done it, now women were universally writing about the experience with more depth and from different angles and perspectives. I was amazed to see this kind of widespread change in attitude on the subject (happily so).
ExpatWomen:Given your interest in women travelling solo, do you think there is an increasing trend for women to travel the world solo, and if so, why do you think this is the case?
Ingrid: Yes, stats show that more women are traveling and more are going solo as well. I think that has to do with a number of factors. For one thing women have more disposable income than they used to. Many are choosing to travel when the kids leave home or before starting a second career or as a kind of retirement gift. And in this vain, I think travel is considered a kind of rite of passage these days, marking big changes and transitions in people’s lives. Also you have the baby boomers reaching the traditional retirement age so you have a big group of women who have some time on their hands, some money and a desire to continue to have adventure in their lives.Travel is a natural calling for many of these folks.
As for the solo aspect, I think some people go purposefully on a solo trip but many go out of necessity. They want to go but can’t find anyone to go with. And now, they are just willing to go alone rather than sacrifice the chance to travel. Hopefully they have been inspired by other women and their accounts of traveling solo. Once you know other women do this and are just fine, you are more apt to make the leap yourself
ExpatWomen:What would be your Top 5 Tips for women embarking on an overseas adventure alone?
Ingrid:
Do your research. Read up on the country, customs and history. It makes the experience richer and less disorienting.
Pack light. I have hauled heavy bags around the world with me and it is a drag. You can usually buy anything you need and you can always wash clothes at laundries or in hotel or hostel sinks.
Rent a cell phone. This is something you can do these days that makes logistics on the ground a bit smoother and provides a feeling of security.
Learn some of the language(s). Even a little goes a long way. Just knowing the niceties and how to ask for something opens you up to the people of the place you are visiting in a much greater way. You also go a long way to dispelling the myth of the arrogant or clueless American (if you are American). And we need all the help we can get these days.
Spend time in small towns as well as big cities. Big cities are great for art , architecture and cuisine but small towns give you a flavor of the country and its people that busy cities just don’t. It is so much easier to meet people in small towns as they generally are more interested in foreigners and the pace is slower.
6. Book a room in small hotels, hostels or B&Bs. The smaller the place is the better chance there is more of a communal feeling, less anonymity. This is nice when you are traveling alone as you often meet other travelers more easily. I might not stay in a hostel while traveling with my husband, for instance but when going it alone I will, as I know if I want to find someone to go out with it will be easier in that kind of environment.
ExpatWomen: Do you have any advice for the budding writers in our audience who would love to be included in compilations such as yours?
Ingrid: Write, write, write. Join a writing group, take a travel writing course, send your work out to magazines and websites and really give yourself every opportunity to hone the craft. We received so many stories that, in and of themselves, were interesting but lacked a real structure. They either had no narrative arc or were all tell no show, basic writing issues that can be conquered by some instruction and some practice. Also, join a list serve or writers group that will help keep you abreast of the various calls for submission out there.
ExpatWomen:Thank you very much Ingrid. We wish you great success with your new book!
For more details of Ingrid's adventure tour, please click here
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