Unpacked by Afar

Why Women's Travel Writing Matters More Than Ever

August 13
33 mins

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Episode Description

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.

THIS WEEK’S GUEST

Lavinia Spalding is the author of Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Keeping Traveler , seven-time series editor of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, and co-author of With a Measure of Grace, This Immeasurable Place, and two editions of the Frommer’s EasyGuide to New Orleans. She has been teaching for more than 30 years and leads writing workshops online and around the world. She lives with her family in New Orleans. Watch her TEDx talk here, and subscribe to her Substack newsletter for updates and essays.

IN THIS EPISODE

  • How Lavinia shapes each volume of Best Women's Travel Writing like a playlist—balancing place, tone, voice, and the ratio of dark to light—and why this year's theme might be best described as "flashes of insight that arise from connection"

  • The essay that has never left her: Sandra Gail Lambert's pre-dawn solo kayak trip through the Florida Everglades, written from a wheelchair, with stakes so high that every preparation detail becomes profound

  • What two decades of reading women's travel writing has taught Lavinia: never underestimate a woman, and women who write about travel tend to be actively seeking transformation, not just sights

  • How the legacy of male-dominated adventure travel writing—conquest narratives, man-versus-place drama—may have conditioned women to fear solo travel, and what it looks like as that changes

  • Why a women's travel writing anthology still matters in 2026: to amplify voices of autonomy and adventure at a moment when women's rights and freedom of movement are under pressure

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 Young, Fearless, and Filled With Wonder
00:03:00 How a Volume Comes Together
00:07:00 The Traveler She Was, the Traveler She Is
00:10:00 Building the Playlist
00:14:00 The Stories That Live Inside Her
00:19:00 Never Underestimate a Woman
00:23:00 Who Gets to Be an Adventurer
00:28:00 Why It Matters Now


LINKS & RESOURCES

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