S5, E45: Why Women’s Travel Writing Matters More Than Ever

For the past several decades, writer and editor Lavinia Spalding has championed women’s travel writing. She’s helmed seven editions of the Best Women’s Travel Writing—the celebrated Traveler’s Tales anthology—including the latest, released on June 9th.

Over the years, she’s read hundreds of submissions a year from women around the world and distilled them into one essential collection. So host Aislyn Greene sits down with Lavinia to talk about what two decades of editing these stories has taught her about how women explore the world, and why amplifying those voices matters more than ever right now.

Lavinia Spalding on 15 Years of Editing Women’s Travel Writing

For nearly 15 years, Lavinia Spalding has read thousands of travel essays by women each year to assemble The Best Women’s Travel Writing, the long-running Travelers’ Tales anthology now on its 13th volume. On this episode of Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene talks with Spalding about how she builds an anthology out of 1,600 annual submissions, why women’s travel writing has shifted away from the man-versus-nature narratives she grew up reading, and what keeping a travel journal has taught her about memory, connection, and why writing about a trip can matter as much as taking it.

Topics discussed in this episode

• How Lavinia Spalding narrows 1,600 annual submissions down to the 27 essays that make it into each volume
• Why she builds each anthology like a playlist rather than a themed collection—and the “flashes of insight” that emerged as this volume’s throughline
• How Spalding’s own travel style has changed since moving to South Korea at 25—from thrill-seeking to slow, immersive travel
• Why so many classic travel narratives frame the world as something to survive, and how that shapes the questions women still get asked about solo travel
• The essays that have stuck with her most, including Ann Hood’s Día de los Muertos story and Sandra Gail Lambert’s solo kayak trip through the Florida Everglades

Frequently asked questions

What is The Best Women’s Travel Writing series?

The Best Women’s Travel Writing is an annual anthology of nonfiction travel essays by women, published by Travelers’ Tales since 2005. Lavinia Spalding has served as series editor for the past 7 volumes, including the newest, Volume 13, which collects 27 essays.

How does Lavinia Spalding choose which essays make the book?

Spalding reads through roughly 1,600 submissions a year, gathered through the Travelers’ Tales portal and her own outreach to travel magazines and literary journals, then narrows those down and balances the final selection for variety of place, tone, and subject.

What are some standout essays from The Best Women’s Travel Writing series?

Spalding points to Ann Hood’s essay about traveling to Mexico to observe Día de los Muertos while grieving her daughter, Laura Killingbeck’s “Into the Wind,” about a bicycle trip from California to Canada, and Sandra Gail Lambert’s “I Am Here, in This Morning Light,” about a solo pre-dawn kayak trip through the Florida Everglades as a wheelchair user.

Where can I buy The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13?

It’s available at Bookshop.org and wherever books are sold.

People, places, and resources in this episode

• The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13 — edited by Lavinia Spalding
• Lavinia Spalding — series editor and author of Writing Away
• Read Lavinia’s newsletter: Writing Away on Substack
• “In France, a Swimming Pool With a Story” — read Aislyn Greene’s Afar essay, included in Volume 13

Full transcript

Lavinia Spalding: I just realized that the real world around me in South Korea was so much more interesting than anything I was coming up with. That was fiction. And so I started writing there. And who was I then? I was young and fearless and filled with wonder.

Aislyn Greene: That is writer and editor, Lavinia Spalding, and she’s describing the traveler she was at age 25 when she had just landed in South Korea with a creative writing degree and a thirst to explore the world. Throughout the years since, she has championed other women’s travel stories and today we’re going to hear about them. I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is Unpacked by Afar. Lavinia is the editor of the Best Women’s Travel Writing Anthology, and its 13th volume just came out. In it, you’ll find 27 essays by women from all over the world. And full disclosure, before we start, Lavinia is a friend and this year she put one of my own essays in the book, but I was a fan of her work long before I was in her pages. We sat down to talk about how she builds a volume, what nearly 15 years of reading women’s travel stories has taught her, and how she herself has changed as a woman who moves throughout the world.

Lavinia, welcome to Unpacked. It’s so lovely to see you as always. And we are here to talk about the latest anthology of best women’s travel writing, which is out in the world now. So to start with, will you share with listeners what exactly this series is?

Lavinia: Sure. So it’s a series that’s been 13 editions. This is Volume 13, and it’s nonfiction personal essays from around the world by women. This one has 27 in it. So it ranges from, I would say 26 to 33 or so stories, and some are a little more reported than others. But there’s almost always a sort of deep personal journey.

Aislyn: It’s really fun to pick it up and just start reading wherever you land. I have been doing that as with my copy.

Lavinia: You know, people keep saying that to me and I’m like, no.

Aislyn: Really, it’s purposeful. It’s like listening to an album, you know, not from beginning to end, but just, okay, well, I will, um, strike that from the record and say that I have read it from beginning to end and did not do any flipping.

Lavinia: No, please don’t, because everyone’s doing that and I think it is fun for them. I mean, that’s it’s maybe it’s a little bit like that stumble upon when you travel. Yeah, do it that way instead of having it be planned out.

Aislyn: Well, we’ll get to the kind of playlist quality of it. But I wanted to go back to the beginning. So Travelers’ Tales is the publisher of this series, and they’ve been publishing women’s travel literature since 1995. Very cool. So when did Best Women’s Travel writing begin and when did you arrive to it?

Lavinia: It started in 2005. They had put out an anthology in 2004 called The Best Travel Writing, and they noticed. They recognised that the vast majority of their submissions were coming from women, and they.

Aislyn: Interesting.

Lavinia: They wanted to be able to publish more than they could in that volume. So they decided to dedicate a whole series to it. And so at first, Lucy McCauley did the first 5 volumes, and then Stephanie Elizondo Griest did one, and then Stephanie wasn’t able to edit the next one. And I had published a book with Travelers’ Tales about keeping travel journals, and I guess they liked it. And I guess they liked working with me. And so they asked me to edit the next one. And I’ve been doing it ever since. And now I’ve edited 7. This is the seventh.

Aislyn: Well, and I just want to acknowledge the huge amount of work that you put into this because as I discovered this this year, this is largely you. You do everything. Will you tell me how it comes together start to finish, beginning with the hundreds and thousands of submissions that you read every year?

Lavinia: It’s certainly a lot. The submissions come in through the Travelers’ Tales portal and through my own, um, outreach to my favorite travel magazines and literary journals requesting nominations. But this time I got 1,600 submissions in total. And I did have a lot of help reading this time. I had an editorial assistant, which was amazing. So then they come in and it’s a process from there of sort of whittling down the yeses, the maybes, the nos. And I’ll often just have a huge stack of yeses, a huge hundreds and hundreds of yeses and maybes. And so from there, deciding which story about the death of a parent, or which story about a post-divorce trip, or which sort of really extreme adventure story, and which story from Paris and which story from Italy.

Aislyn: How do you know, like, is there something inside of you that just kind of there’s a chord that rings true when you read an essay or a submission that you know is going to make it in or is likely to make it in?

Lavinia: I think so. I think that there are certain stories that I know from the first read that it’s just a slam dunk because I’m so moved by it. It makes me cry and laugh and think, and it doesn’t need a ton of editing. And then I learned something about the place or about the culture, and it just sort of has everything. So those do come in and and then I think, well, I’ve already got my Paris story or my Italy story, and then maybe another one will come in. I’m like, oh, but I really like this one. What do I do? I can move to France. Everyone likes hearing about France.

Aislyn: That’s true. It’s true. I was reading a little bit about your early life, which I didn’t know. We’ve known each other for a fairly long time at this point, but. So you started writing, I believe, professionally in your early 20s, though it sounds like you’ve been writing since you were a kid and even started a novel or wrote a novel when you were 10. So who would you say that traveler was back then? And who would you say you are now or this year as you were sifting through those 1,600 submissions?

Lavinia: Yeah. First of all, I’ll say that novel that I wrote when I was 10 was very bad.

Aislyn: You wrote a novel at 10. That’s something to be celebrated in my book.

Lavinia: I always knew I was going to be a writer, and I studied it in college. Yeah. So my travel writing career really began when I moved to South Korea when I was 25. I had just graduated, and I had a degree in creative writing, but I was working on novels and poetry. And then I just realized that the real world around me in South Korea was so much more interesting than anything I was coming up with that was fiction. And so I started writing there. And who was I then? I was young and fearless and filled with wonder. I’m still filled with wonder. I’m not young anymore. But yeah, that that traveler was a lot of fun. You know, I just, I really threw myself at the world when I lived in South Korea for 6 years, and I was just constantly jumping on airplanes and backpacking all over Asia. I had grown up without any money. And this was the first time that I had a job that allowed me any freedom to do that. And so if I had 5 days off of teaching, I was teaching ESL. I’m not sure if I mentioned that, but if I had a week off, I’d just hop over to wherever, Guam. I, I traveled all over. I was young and single and falling in love and all kinds of different languages.

Aislyn: And yeah.

Lavinia: I was very adventurous. And now who am I now compared to, I mean, I would say that I’d I’d like to think I’m still adventurous, and I’m not the kind of person who says no to cultural experiences. But I’m 56 now and some of those, you know, daredevil things that I did when I was young don’t interest me as much anymore. I think slow travel is more my jam now. I guess I’d say I look for experiences that are more spiritual or illuminating, connected. Whereas I used to just love jumping out of a plane, jumping on a plane, and jumping out of it.

Aislyn: How many times have you jumped out of a plane?

Lavinia: I’ve only jumped out of a plane once, but I did a lot of other things like that. I went hang gliding off of a lighthouse in Australia, did rappelling off of a massive mountain in Korea and yeah, I was really into thrill, just anything thrilling. And now I think I crave like a more meaningful relationship with the place. My favorite thing is really lingering in a place now and finding my favorite restaurant or my favorite neighborhood.

Aislyn: Yeah, it seems like that kind of makes you very uniquely suited for this role as an editor of this series, because you have such a breath of experience. So you referred to, I think, in a podcast, building a volume of this series as more of a playlist and then I interrupted that by saying that I flipped to a story sometimes and read it. But what does that mean for how you shape it and some of those selections? And would you say that this year’s playlist has a theme?

Lavinia: Yeah, I never have a theme in mind when I’m compiling the edition, but often a theme will emerge. Maybe if I had to say a theme, maybe flashes of insight. And most of the time that comes from connection. So what is a word that means revelation or insight that arises from connection? That’s the theme. I don’t know.

Aislyn: The Germans must have one. Yes, we’ll look it up. Well, of the 27 essays in this edition, which ones do you feel best represent that theme?

Lavinia: Oh gosh, there’s a really beautiful one by Ann Hood, the writer Ann Hood, who’s a New York Times best seller. And it’s about going to Mexico to celebrate day of the dead as a way of grieving her daughter, who died when she was 6. And there are a lot of really beautiful insights that come from being there and connecting with the people, sort of ushering her through that experience. There’s a story called “Into the Wind” by Laura Killingbeck, and she goes on a bicycling trip from California up through Canada. And it’s really about that she’s sort of fleeing her life or not fleeing it, but leaving her past behind. She had worked as a dancer in nightclubs, and then she was working as a mascot for a zoo, and she was feeling a little like she needed a big change. And so she just takes a bike and starts bicycling. And it’s really about her not only changing her relationship with her life, but with her body. And she’s on her own most of the time. But then she meets up with this group of other bicyclists and they just completely change her life. So that’s one that was so incredibly moving to me. I cried at the end. I’m getting a little teary thinking about it right now.

Aislyn: Yes. And I just love anything cycling because I like to ride my bike too. So. Well, I’m curious to know if there are stories from past editions that have really stuck with you because, for example, your story that you wrote for Afar, the feature that you wrote several years ago, which we’ll link out to in the show notes, is one that I always cite. You know, when people ask me about like, what are the Afar features that I should start with? It just has everything. It has depth, it has humor. It’s beautifully written. So what are some of the stories that you would say from past editions that have really stuck with you in that way?

Lavinia: Well, first of all, thank you. That means a lot to me.

Aislyn: Yeah, of course. I love that story so much. Yeah.

Lavinia: I love writing it and traveling for it. I, I will be thinking of yours. I know that going forward, you have a story in this edition, and I will definitely be thinking of yours for a long time. But from a past edition, there are so many that I still think about that I that just live with me. I think by now I’ve edited or included about 200 stories in this series, and there are so many I still think about. One that comes to mind is it’s by a writer named Sandra Gail Lambert, and it’s called “I Am Here, in This Morning Light”, and it chronicles the 30 some hours before, during, and after she takes a pre-dawn solo kayaking trip through the Florida Everglades. And it’s incredibly detailed in terms of preparations for the trip, calculations, making lists and getting the canoe to from her van to the water. And that probably sounds maybe tedious, except that she’s wheelchair bound. And so she has to do it completely by herself. And the stakes are so high and she she can’t make any missteps of leaving something behind. Like she has to figure out how to charge her wheelchair and where to leave it and what time to leave. And she has to really actively seek assistance at times, but avoid it at others because she doesn’t want to bring attention to her. But she knows she needs help in certain times. And it’s such an exquisite essay and it really I still think about it, I think, because I just think about how much I take for granted in terms of ability and travel. And I teach that essay actually frequently because I think that it’s well, it’s gorgeously written with really rich, evocative details of the place itself. But you’re also so deeply inside this writer’s psyche. And it’s, yeah, it’s really moving to me.

Aislyn: What a gift to have these stories live inside you in that way.

Lavinia: It’s such an honor. I have to say, I get weepy if I start thinking about it too much, but it’s really an honor to sit with these stories and to help the writers, in many cases, shape them and bring more of the inner story out and what the stories are really, really, really about. And yeah, yeah, it’s an honor.

Aislyn: Well, you know, working with you on my story, it’s evident that you really care, you know, like you to the very final detail. You’re so invested. And so to imagine you doing that with, you know, more than one, hopefully not with every single one. But that’s it’s just a lot of your own energy and time that you’re putting into this. So thank you again.

Lavinia: I can be quite opinionated as an editor. I’m not sure everyone appreciates it as much as you do.

Aislyn: I would much rather have an editor than not, right? Like, and it’s good to have somebody pushing back and challenging you. I think that things only get better when you have that voice. So it is a little eerie to me when you don’t get notes.

Lavinia: Exactly. Because we get into writing, because we want to write well. And yes, there’s always something that can be improved upon. But I will also say that I taught your essay recently.

Aislyn: Oh, really?

Lavinia: Yeah. And my students loved it.

Aislyn: Oh my gosh.

Lavinia: Well, you do a really beautiful job of weaving all the different parts in, you know. You know, it’s about a swimming pool in Paris where, well, you know, this, but for the listeners where you have this awakening of identity and you weave together that story so beautifully with the history of the swimming pool and your own childhood and even your grandparents history, and then the current events. And it’s just so skillfully woven. And that’s, that’s really an art.

Aislyn: That’s really sweet. Thank you. And it was an honor to have a story included. And that one had been sitting in my head. I was like, there’s some way that I feel like all of these things should come together for years. I mean, this is not wasn’t a recent experience. And then it was finally Katherine LaGrave at Afar who was like, hey, do you want to write something for me on aAfar.com? And we talked about it and she was the one who’s like, I think we should do this. So it’s editors who help you sometimes figure out how to tell a story and when to tell a story. So well. What do you think that you have learned, you know, about how women explore the world, and that’s maybe too broad of a stroke to paint, but you’ve read so many stories from women or people who identify as women. So, yeah. What do you think you’ve taken away from that?

Lavinia: I’ve learned to never underestimate a woman. That’s probably the main thing I’ve learned. I’ve read these stories where I’m like, how the heck did she do that? You know, even just that story I was just talking about, it’s with determination and grit and will and passion anything, anything is possible.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Lavinia: And, you know, I’ve learned that we all travel in really different ways and for different reasons. And I guess one common denominator is that I think women who at least women who write about their travels seem to be on a growth path are interesting. They’re not just traveling to see the sights and have fun. Most women who submit stories, at least to this series, are actively seeking some kind of transformative experience or some wisdom. Some they want to be changed by their travels. And I’m not saying that men don’t, but I don’t edit men’s narratives, so I’m just speaking to women. But I think women are very open to being changed by our experiences.

Aislyn: I do feel like at least some of the writing that I’ve done. It’s not just the experience, but it’s also then the experience of writing about it. Like I get new insights about something because I’m thinking about it maybe a little bit more deeply. Do you find that to be true as well?

Lavinia: 100 percent. Absolutely. While I’m journaling even. I’m a big advocate of journal keeping. I wrote a book about keeping travel journals, and there’s just nothing you travel. Yeah. And there’s just, there’s nothing like you’re writing and you’re surprised by what comes out the tip of your pen or the keys. If you’re typing and you’re like, wow, that I, I just learned something about myself. And that’s that process of writing. It opens, it unlocks traveling without writing about it, I find to be much less nourishing experience.

Aislyn: Do you find that it helps you remember experiences more as well?

Lavinia: Yeah, definitely. As I age, my memory is definitely not what it was. And so it’s really important for me to keep notes. I keep a few small notebooks that can fit into even a back pocket, and I make lists of things like sounds and creatures and people I meet. And so then if I’m really tired that night and I can only write a few things, I’ve at least got those notes and those helped me a lot. But I love crafting the essay too. Beyond just journaling, I think it does help me make sense of my experiences.

Aislyn: Yeah, solidifies them into something new or different or more complete cohesive. You know, there was one question that came up for me when I was thinking about this conversation, and that’s what was it like for you coming up as a writer in the world at the time that you were starting out? Because, you know, I came up at a time where most of the travel writers, at least the really well-known ones, were men and predominantly white men. You know, they were, they are wonderful writers. But I didn’t often see my stories or experiences reflected in print or on screen. And in the past decade or so that I’ve been at Afar, I’ve been so happy to see much more diversity in the travel space. It’s been a huge focus of ours as well. So I, you know, I hope we’re offering a more diverse lens for our audience. But what was your experience like?

Lavinia: Well, I should say that coming up as a writer, I owe in large part my career to white men, my mentors. I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for some of them who really took me under their wing and said, you have talent, and I’m going to use my power as a white man to amplify it. And so there’s that. It’s funny, I, you know, I, I think a lot of those narratives are so extreme that the ones that we grew up reading there, there are so many of them are like man versus place and the conquest and the quest and, you know, like it’s almost travel as an extreme life or death sport where if you’re going out into the world, you have to have your grappling hooks and your spearfishing equipment and whatever. And I can’t.

Aislyn: Really speak.

Lavinia: To.

Aislyn: I mean, yes, totally. Yeah, absolutely.

Lavinia: I do wonder, I was also reading my mom was really good about putting like stories about Amelia Earhart and Two Hands, and one of the, my most memorable reads early on was Beryl Markham’s :”West with the Night”. Wow. And, um, you know, these these pilots, these female pilots, I was really impressed by them. But, you know, I do wonder if there’s some correlation between those stories and the fact that at virtually every reading or event I have for this series, there’s some woman in the audience during the Q&A who will raise her hand and essentially ask if it’s safe to travel, if it’s if you know, especially alone.

Aislyn: Mhm.

Lavinia: I just wonder if it’s because so many of those narratives had the male writer being drugged or, you know, fearing for his life, you know, preparing to defend his life. And so we who travel and read those, we had this idea that we had to, um, have this incredibly dramatic story in order for our words to matter.

Aislyn: Yes.

Lavinia: And then also, we’d better be prepared to, to, to defend our lives.

Aislyn: Without a grappling hook at the ready.

Lavinia: It’s interesting.

Aislyn: Yeah. I don’t really know. And I think you’re right. Especially kind of the men who were in those positions and handed the baton and said, you know, I want to share this, this platform. Like I think there’s so many of them out there. And it’s wonderful to see more diverse storytelling in travel. But yeah, Nikki, our producer, and I have talked a lot about women who want to travel solo and how usually the first question they get is like, are you sure that’s safe? And we’ve talked about wanting to help change that narrative, to remind people that women can and do travel safely by themselves. I mean, all of us have traveled so much on our own, and very rarely have we run into any issues. And I think often we can intuit when perhaps there’s an issue afoot and it’s time to make our exit.

Lavinia: Absolutely. I think women are sort of uniquely adept at intuiting when, you know, doing that gut check. But I often feel much safer when I’m traveling than I do, you know, walking around in my own country. So I haven’t really experienced, I mean, I’ve been, you know, I’ve had documents stolen, whatever, but I’ve never, I’ve never feared for my life. And I’ve traveled a lot.

Aislyn: Yeah, yeah. It’s so nice to hear.

Lavinia: Yeah. And I love that you’re talking about diverse voices in travel writing because that is such an important change that I’ve seen. I’m definitely seeing more women writers and more diverse writers, and it’s something that’s really important to me. I actively seek stories by writers from historically underrepresented communities, and I think, you know, that’s something that all editors should do. Yeah, absolutely. A great many are doing now. So there is a shift happening for sure.

Aislyn: Yeah, I there’s not really, I think an excuse in 2026. And it just the diversity of stories is more interesting, right? Like you get so many different perspectives. Well, given all of that, like, why do you think a women only or anthology is so important at this moment in time in 2026?

Lavinia: I mean, I think it’s still nice to see women being given the opportunity to take up more space in this genre that has always been male dominated. And so even if it’s not entirely the case anymore that we have to, you know, fight our way into this sphere, I think we can still make up for lost time. Yeah.

Aislyn: And yeah.

Lavinia: And also right now, the truth is we are seeing women’s rights being stripped away, and we’re hearing politicians and public figures spewing misogyny and podcasters doing the same thing and saying that a woman’s place is in the home. So I guess in light of that, I think the more opportunities to amplify women’s voices with stories of autonomy and adventure, the better. Yeah, the more the merrier.

Aislyn: Yeah, I love that because there’s nothing like reading a story that makes you think, oh, I could do that, right? Or they did that. I could do that or some version of that.

Lavinia: Exactly. And even if it’s not a you know, there are stories in here that are cautionary tales in every best women’s travel writing, there’s a story that makes you think, oh my gosh, I’m so glad that wasn’t me. But the writer was alive to tell about it in the end. And so I think, yeah, it’s it’s equal parts inspiration and edification.

Aislyn: Last question for you. What would you say your advice is for women who are out there traveling the world, who want to have more autonomy, to want to spend more time on the road? What would you say to them?

Lavinia: Mhm. So for women who are who are already traveling, I would say to practice the art of deeply noticing to really immerse yourself in the experience and find ways to really absorb the places that you go. And I think that when we do that, we find more connection in those places. And the more we do that, the braver we become and the more natural travel becomes. You know, I think that there it’s really become very easy these days to go traveling and sort of have our camera out constantly and not let a place really touch us deeply and not make a lot of connections. And so being present, really present and not letting the online world get in between us and our experience, I think is really important. And then I think just actively looking for powerful and profound, transformative experiences that bring us inside the place instead of being on the outside recording it. Those are the things that really make us believe in travel.

Aislyn: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 100 percent. Those are the memories that you carry with you. It’s not really like, oh, I saw this wonderful iconic site. It’s like I was invited into this person’s home or whatever the situation may be connected with somebody in a more real way. Those are the ones that stick with me.

Lavinia: That’s where the magic comes.

Aislyn: I couldn’t agree more. And it’s a perfect note to end on.

Lavinia: Thank you.

Aislyn: Thank you Lavinia. So nice to have you here.

Lavinia: It’s so nice to be here.

Aislyn: The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13 is out now. You can find it at bookshop.org. And learn more about Lavinia and her work at laviniaspalding.com. She also writes a wonderful Substack called Writing Away, which I’ve linked to in the show notes. We’ll see you next time.

If you’re ready for more travel inspiration and intel like this, visit afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories and interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy, and be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been, Unpacked, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.