Latina Book Club

Just heard word that the lovely mujeres at Latina Book Club have posted a little Q&A we recently conducted about travel, books, and the writing life. Here is an excerpt:

Q:   Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? How are you getting all these grants to travel and write?

I am from Corpus Christi, Texas (or, as I prefer to call it, Corpitos), but much of my life has been spent on the road. (My great-great Uncle Jake was a hobo who saw America with his legs dangling over the edge of a freight train, so wanderlust is encoded in my DNA!) My journey began in 1992, when I attended a high school journalism conference in Washington DC that featured a keynote by a rockstar foreign correspondent for CNN. He had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, riots and revolutions. When he finished, I ran up to the microphone and asked how I could be a foreign correspondent just like him. “Learn Russian,” he said. So I did. In 1996, I jetted off to Moscow and haven’t stopped traveling since. I’ve explored 35 countries and 48 of the United States thus far, but while wanderlust sparked my interest in travel, activism fuels it. I’ve stumbled upon outrageous injustices in this world, and the only way my conscience will allow me to depart is by writing about it.

As for the dinero to do this, I have something marvelous to disclose: You don’t need to be rich to travel, just resourceful. For starters, there are loads of travel grants, scholarships, and fellowships out there, from the Henry Luce Scholarship to the Fulbright to the Rotary Club. If you crash on people’s couches or in airports, eat street food, and avoid Western Europe, you’ll probably spend much less than if you stayed here in Los Estados Unidos. You’ll also have far more adventures.

For the rest of the entrevista, visit the Latina Book Club Blog.