the latest…
Events for Letter to a Stranger hosted by McNally Jackson, Prairie Lights, The Book Cellar, Book Passage, Greenlight Books, Book Bar, and the L.A. Times Book Club. See links for recordings of select events.
reviews & interviews…
An interview with AFAR about “the miracle of strange encounters in travel.” A review in Shondaland. A feature story in the LA Times, via the LA Times Book Club. And finally, some Letter to a Stranger love from La Playa Books.
Loved speaking with host Michael Wheaton for this episode of The Lives of Writers podcast. Somehow he got me admitting that Baked Beans for Breakfast was once my favorite book and prattling on about my maternal anxieties here in Egypt. He's one of those people that just...gets you *talkin,* which I guess is what good podcast hosting is all about. Grateful for the insightful questions, the meandering dialogue, and the chance to share what it was like to edit Letter to a Stranger; Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Listen here: https://thelivesofwriters.com/ .
Early Reviews of Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us (Algonquin Books, March 22, 2022).
Woo-hoo! Three starred reviews for the Letter to a Stranger anthology. Click here to read more from: Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and Shelf Awareness.
Best American Travel Writing 2021 - Notables!
Thrilled to see my AFAR feature story about Eastern Canada chosen as a notable in Best American Travel Writing 2021. Just as exciting to see two (!!) Off Assignment stories reprinted in this prestigious anthology (a “Letter to a Stranger” essay by Megan Gunn, and another by Jina Moore) and another selected for the notables list (a “Letter to a Stranger” by Alison Wellford. Kudos to Aube Rey Lescure who edited all three of these works.
We have a cover! Art by the ever so talented Jaya Micelli. I’m over the moon to get an early glimpse of the book’s cover, and cannot WAIT to hold it in my hands. You can preorder here, on Algonquin’s website. Launch date March 22, 2021.
“I can’t hear the term ‘single-use’ without thinking ‘eternal impact.’”
A story about sailing through the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Loved writing this story for Bloomberg Businessweek, about a world journey that fundamentally reoriented me. I wrote about ocean-crossing through the Pacific Garbage Patch, and the way it helpfully haunts me.
“My new colleague Sal, our faculty marine biologist, had spent much of his life on the ocean but was still wary of our trip’s first leg between San Diego and Yokohama. “Don’t believe anyone who tells you they can’t get seasick,” he cautioned. “They’re like people who tell you they can swallow any hot sauce. They just haven’t met their match.”
Nobody is a match for the Pacific. Even on days when I had three classes to teach and 50 essays to grade, the ocean never receded to a backdrop. It was the imp tossing water glasses off my cabin shelves and hurling shampoo bottles across the shower floor. It was the invisible dance partner I balanced against while lecturing on Rachel Carson—quads braced and toes pressed against the keeling floor. It was the twang and creak in my mattress, the slow and beautiful glide of my lampshade’s shadow down my cabin wall.
One night, during a storm as deafening as cannon fire, I stumbled down the hallway to a nearby deck and saw the Pacific’s might in the raw. I watched it buck our seven-story cruiser up in the air, and when the prow fell and smacked the sea’s surface, the spume was so astonishing—like an uproar of billowing clouds—that I had to turn my head. It felt like nature was smashing her cymbals right in my face.”
A forthcoming essay collection, with Algonquin Books
Blurb in Publisher’s Lunch. Huge thanks to my agent Chris and his marvelous assistant Roma, who made this deal happen. Book will be coming out in fall 2020, and will feature the “best of” Off Assignment’s “Letter to a Stranger” archives, plus thirty-some new missives from a dreamy cast of storytellers.
An essay for the Modern Love column
“…Erik was a music professor on the ship, but it took us half of the Pacific to intersect. Shorter than me and a little younger, Erik was the kind of guy who knew Kurt Cobain’s birthday, death day and shoe size. I often sported a blue jumpsuit; Erik rocked out skinny jean shorts. On Tinder, we would not have swiped right.
It takes nearly three weeks to cross the Pacific, plenty of time for claustrophobia to grow. I handled mine by hiding out in a corner of deck five, where it was just me and the sea’s roar. But it turned out deck five was an escape for Erik, too — a nine-yard stretch he jogged over and over, desperate for exercise. Sooner or later, in our aloneness, we were going to find each other….” Read more….
Choo-Choo. Train Story for AFAR’s May/June 2020 Issue.
It’s been a while since I took an epic train journey, so I said a quick, ardent YES to an AFAR magazine assignment to ride Canada’s “Ocean” train, from Montreal to Halifax. Feature story coming out soon, in the May/June issue of AFAR.
Meeting Pico’s Lucky Students.
I love visiting the classes of friends, getting to engage with the students who are at the center of their teaching lives, feeling the energy of the room, the alchemy of discussion.. This March visit to Pico Iyer’s “Literature of Fact: Writing and Reporting on Place” was a special treat though. His writers clearly adore their prof, and are so engaged with the course material. They read my essay “Blot Out” and lent me a chance to revisit the point of view of that essay, now that I actually live part-time in Egypt. Brilliant questions asked, warm company enjoyed. More context here.
Decided it was high time I wrote a book review.
“ The book is like an attic kingdom the reader can climb up into, an alternative reality glinting with redemptive humor and singular pain. And the book’s thrall only intensifies in its home stretch. Right where you might expect a memoir to move to a more meditative plane, waxing reflective in a dust-settling sort of way, Madden pummels you with a suspenseful, unforeseen finale. ”
For full review of “Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls,” click here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/an-atlas-of-self
“Launching a Literary Start-Up”: AWP Panel
“If I’d known what it would take, I never would have done it” is a common refrain among founders—of startups, of organizations, and yes, of books and magazines. Always, it takes more work than expected. But the literary scene today is alive with new endeavors—proof that transforming an idea into a platform is hard but not impossible. This panel brings together four founders to talk about this tricky-to-perceive line between hard and impossible. Saturday, March 30, 2019. 1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
Moderator: Colleen Kinder
Speakers: Joel Whitney, Sarah Menkedick, Ander Monson.
Chattin’ with Porter Fox at the New School.
Reading at the New School with Porter Fox, Founder of Nowhere Magazine, Wednesday, Jan 30th.
I’m really looking forward to reading with (and meeting!) Porter. I’m a big fan of his magazine Nowhere, not to mention enthusiastic about anyone who writes travel narratives set in Canada.
All details about the reading can be found here. Hope to see your lovely face at the New School!
Huge thanks to Laura Cronk at The New School, and Rachel Veroff at Off Assignment, for getting this in motion.
summer 2018: retrospective
Owen and I had such a marvelous group to work with at the Millay Colony. Thanks Dan, Laura, Jen, & Phil, for being so ready to pick up a pen, camera, marker….you name it; you did it.
the art of description
I'm teaching a course with my fiance Owen Murray, photographer extraordinaire. Come join! Would love, love, love to create/collaborate/hang with you at. All details + costs below....
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The Millay Colony
THE ART OF DESCRIPTION
with Colleen Kinder and Owen Murray
June 28 to July 2, 2018
Fees: $900.
All authors are illustrators. They sketch vivid scenes, legible faces, contoured landscapes, and so much more in the reader’s minds-eye. How do we cultivate this ability: to animate the visual world distinctively and unforgettably in the imaginations of our readers? This workshop focuses on the art of description, through myriad writing exercises and prompts, as well as basic lessons in drawing and photography. Drawing from the painter John Ruskin’s belief in “word-painting,” we will use visual art as a portal into prose-writing, bringing our attention to the minute detail of our environment on the Millay grounds, and exploring how we can cultivate a particular voice and aesthetic through the very things we notice and render. Co-taught by a writer and photographer/illustrator team Colleen Kinder and Owen Murray, this course will take students on a two-dimensional journey, equipping them to illustrate the visual world in radiant detail.
and a magazine was born...
In summer 2017, our Off Assignment team released a gorgeous print volume, featuring the best of four years of OA tales, including features by Ted Conover, Pico Iyer, and Alex Sheshunoff. "Letter to a Stranger" essays by Julia Glass, Leslie Jamison, Anjali Sachdeva, Howie Axelrod, Lavinia Spalding, Sheba Karim, Meron Hadero, and so very much more. All design props go to wonder-women Leslie Kwok and Bianca Wendt, who labored so passionately to make this collection a delight to hold in your hands. Candace Rose Rardon was the editorial vision behind this beaut. See below GIF for a vicarious experience. For your very own copy ($18), just click here.
The print collection, at last! Huge thanks to Owen Murray for making this giffity gif gif gif.
the campaign…
Off Assignment’s Kickstarter video! You wouldn’t believe how many hours a person can spend listening to JINGLES, trying to find the right blend of pep and poignance... Man ‘o' man. Never again, Premium Beats.com. Never again.
Huge props and thanks go to travel videographer Gregory Walsh, for coming up to NY to film this; to Julia Calagiovanni, who got down in the storyboarding trenches; Pico Iyer who sat for an interview; Ed Cohen, who lent us his painting studio, + Katy Osborn and V. Steph Carendi for their eloquence + patience + laughs; Ramin Talalie, a filmmaker we were so blessed to collaborate with; my former student Jefferson Wooley, whose gorgeous travel footage patches through this film—plus so many other generous + talented folks, who got this film DONE, in time for a rockin’ Kickstarter….
A most excellent shout-out...
Off Assignment's flagship essay series, "Letter to a Stranger" made a cameo in The New York Times' "What We're Reading," thanks to reporter Jenna Wortham. Jenna, this made our day. Our spring. Our year.
Reading at Princeton…
All details here! Huge thanks to Chloe Vettier, for arranging and hosting this.
LETTER TO A STRANGER: ROCAMADOUR, FRANCE.
Published by Off Assignment, Spring 2016. Read full essay here. Listen on Soundcloud here.
“Now, I just had to look up. I just had to look up and not immediately down. I had to lift my eyes from your feet, shut up about red shoelaces, shut up. And because a younger me would scampered off fast and regretted it faster, I felt dared.”
"Letter to a Stranger" goes live.
“It’s a platform for reflective travel writing. With travel media getting more and more commercial, it’s nice to have a place where professionals can get into the real stories inherent in a foreign encounter. It’s retro and forward-thinking in the right ways. The Letters to a Stranger section is equally heartwarming and haunting. The Triptionary section makes for a lunch-break laugh.”
Thanks to the might and brilliance of Off Assignment managing editor Katy Osborn, we launched our first series of essays, "Letter to a Stranger," featuring stunning essays by Lauren Groff, Howard Axelrod, Julia Glass, Aviya Kushner, Lucas Mann, Leslie Jamison, Ted Conover, Amy Belk, Sheba Karim, Caroline Lester, and so many others! I'm crazy proud of this emerging (and ever-growing) collection. Sign up for the "Dear Stranger" newsletter to get the latest. Great essays just ahead from Melissa Febos, Craig Mod....
Motivational Millenial: Podcast
A meaty chat with Blake Brandes and Ivy LaClair for their new podcast, "Motivational Millennial." Believe no more than 43% of the things I said. Multi-task during the others.
Blake Brandes! How fun are you! So fun.
No Turning Back: 180 Days at Sea.
Oh sweet semester. Sweet semester of so much sea! Pacific: you were my favorite; Atlantic, you put me in a mood. Storms: wish you’d been fiercer. Erik: best, travel mate, ever.
New Essay in VQR: "A Long Night's Journey Into Spring"
God Bless Alison Wright, VQR editor, for trimming down a monster of an essay into this feature in the "Food" issue of VQR. Click here for the full read. And god bless YOU for reading! VQR online claims that'll take 41 minutes. That's a Mad Men episode. You rock.
Semester at Sea.
UVA recently sent us a newsletter with this photo. It thrills and scares me.
Our final itinerary was just announced. It goes like this:
San Diego ---> Hawaii ---> Japan---> China---> Hong Kong---> Singapore---> Vietnam---> Burma---> India---> MAURITIUS---> South Africa---> Namibia---> Morocco---> England.
I've bolded Mauritius because that's the place I'm most keen to go. I'd love if someone came to meet me in Mauritius. By then, I'll have been at sea for two months. How many dramamine pills will that be? How many faculty lounge cocktails? Will the two mix??
The Innocent Abroad
I've wanted to be in a Don George Lonely Planet anthology since I was like 10. Okay, since I was 24. But still. When Don asked me to be a part of his next book, I tried not to yell my yes.
The Innocent Abroad will soon be on shelves. It features essays by Dave Eggers, Cheryl Strayed, Tim Cahill, Mary Karr, Richard Ford, Simon Winchester Sloane Crosley, Pico Iyer, Ann Patchett, Jane Smily and Many More Illustrious Writers Who Will Wonder Who I am and Why My Essay's Alongside Theirs. Hi guys.
My essay's called "Wonder Train," and it's about two eerie days spent wandering around Batopilas, an old silver mining town wedged into the canyon country of Northern Mexico.
"Ouching across the bed of stones, we forded the Batopilas River, finding on the other bank a stone wall, cascading with the roots of two trees: one the creamiest yellow, the other smoke-grey. The trees knit their tips together in a way so consummate and deliberate and tender it was impossible not to lend them personas. Old lovers had slipped into the tendrils of these riverfront trees, choosing the near-eternity of wood over gravestone marble. I knew Jose Luis was seeing the same thing – anyone would, certainly a poet – and I wished, not for the last time, that I was making this journey with someone I loved."
- "Wonder Train"
Best American Women's Travel Writing - Volume 10
Powerhouse Lavinia Spalding has done it again. The editor of this year's collection of womens' travel writing, Lavinia is a master curator of stories and voices. I'm tickled that my essay "Private Lessons" made the Lavinia cut. It's a portrait of an American belly dancer in Cairo, who I trailed around in 2010. This meant enrolling in her belly dancing class, where I promptly humiliated myself, and joining Aleya and her night owl friends for a late, late, LATE night at the cabarets. A full album of photos here.
"Aleya climbs up on stage, looking just as mirthful as she did in her private class—same wide grin—but she might as well be dancing alone in her bedroom, the only mirror in her mind’s eye. I watch, mesmerized by Aleya, nervous for Aleya, smiling with Aleya. I can’t watch her dance without a grin, without wondering, too, how the attention of this cabaret feels. If she’s affected, she doesn’t let on. Raqs sharqi is danced as though alone; belly dancers occupy a false vacuum, a snow globe no one can see in, blurred by squalls of cash. Everyone who climbs on stage—even the show-offs, even the women for sale—succeeds in making it look like a dance for themselves alone, leaving us free to stare through the flying money at bare flesh.
Money falls in our laps, on our heads, in the folds of our clothes. More often, it scatters under our chairs and tables. I see now why the money-collectors are boys; they climb under our tables like monkeys, reaching and snatching without a peep, without a bump. Only late in morning, when the fruit platters and nut bowls on our table have all been buried at least twice in cash (and I have to remind myself that snacking on guava slices and cashews is sort of like licking ten pound notes by now, so how about we stop) am I more or less accustomed to it."
Full essay here.
Travel Writing - France
Imagine my relief when all 14 of the students signed up for my Yale Summer Session travel writing course showed up at the Toulouse airport. And imagine my delight when all 14 of them turned out to be delightful. Not a diva in the group. No one even abused their European right to drink limitless wine.
The highlight our cheese and fig-filled month together was a day hike along the Santiago de Compostela route. I ended up getting lost with these goof balls below. We stole orchard plums, we stared at cows, we ran out of water, we used all of Simon's sunscreen. The essays they wrote about this long day's tangent were some of the best student work of the summer.
Full Auvillar album here.
While I'm singing the praises of my students, check out this lovely essay Elaina Plott (neon shorts above) wrote for our course. It's a gem, in response to one experimental essay prompt--to write a love letter to Auvillar, the town where we lived. The work of Hanoi Lamtharn, a dear student from my spring travel writing course at Yale, is also worth touting. It's called The Teak House, and I adore it.
Reading - Yale Bookstore.
Stoked to read at the Yale Bookstore with Marc Fitten, Nathaniel Rich, + fellow faculty of the Yale Summer Writers' Conference. I taught a nonfiction workshop at the conference, and was blessed with a great crew of essayists and memoirists. They'd wowed me even before we convened as a class. Case and point: this essay by Caitlyn Christensen, an extraordinary young essayist based in Pittsburg.
Hats off to Terry Hawkins, who puts together a hell of a conference, and also sends spunky emails, in which recipients are addressed, "Dear Pashas," "Your Eminences," "Your Worships," and "Spectabile." I still don't know if spectabile is a real world. Terry: don't tell me.
Podcast - The Catapult
Dear friend and quasi-neighbor Jaime Green just launched this new podcast series, The Catapult. Jaime Green, good neighbor that she is, invited me to read part of an essay aloud in her apartment. When the subway shuttle went blazing by in its classic rickety fashion, we paused the recording. I kinda wish we'd kept it in. The sounds of Brooklyn!
Here's the podcast. It's an excerpt from my essay "Blot Out," about disguising myself in a burka in Cairo.
A Conversation with Lavinia Spalding & Marcia DeSanctis
Restless Books hosted the most rad event. Set at the mansion of Edith Wharton, our in the Berkshires. I sat with Lavinia and Marcia and talked about what being a travel writer entails, and specifically, how to pull it off as a woman. The event was for the Restless Women Travelers series, in celebration of the release of A Motor-Flight Through France, by Edith Wharton. Lavinia wrote the preface to the book. Ask her anything about Edith Wharton. Lavinia will tell you.
Reading with Leslie Jamison.
Greywolf sponsored this March 28 event--the kickoff reading for Leslie's new essay collection, The Empathy Exams. Couldn't be prouder of Miss Leslie, and what an honor to read with her. I could praise this book to high heaven, but these folks say it so very well...
Off Assignment: Summer event
"Off the Record Night."
Gideon Lewis-Krauss, Sloane Crosley, Lavinia Spalding, Suketu Mehta
The backyard Andy Isaacson is magic. The perfect place for a backyard reading. There's this raised porch that makes you feel like a dictator of like Evita when you stand up there and greet people. I was stoked to hand over this podium to Gideon, Sloane, Lavinia, and Suketu. All four of them knocked it out of the park. Sloane did some live story-telling about a quirky B&B in Australia, Suketu shared a yet unpublished essay about Sri Lanka, Lavinia read a stunning "letter to a stranger," and Gideon surprised us all by reading some hilarious emails he'd gotten in response to his recent Wired story. Touche. Tony & Farley once again kept the crowd chuckling, with a confessional contest.
As a bonus, baker friend Erin Dietrich brought us Shewolf bread. Erin: you know how to knead rosemary into kaiser, that's all I have to say.
Can you tell this is a screenshot of Facebook? I bet you can.
Off Assignment: Spring event
"Unpitchable Night."
Phillip Lopate, Anna MacDonald, Gay Talese, and Leslie Jamison.
Kudos to Kristina Ensminger, for curating such a gorgeous event. It was Kristina who pointed us to Whisk & Ladle, a most delicious supper club in Williamsburg that is, uh, pretty hard to find on the map. Thank you Danielle, Nick and Mark! Also, we were lucky f-ing ducks to masterful artist Echo Eggebrecht draw obscure countries for our Obscuristan guessing contest. Smarty pants Andrew Rowat knew all the answers.
My partner in crime Vince Errico, chatting with the legendary Gay Talese. Confession: I bought a 200$ dress for the occasion of interviewing Gay Talese. I never spend 200$ on dresses. I ransack my sisters closets and pillage the racks TJMax. But Gay Talese. "Nice dress," was the first thing Gay said upon meeting. Moral of the story: sometimes you should spend more money than you have.
I "interviewed" Gay Talese. This entailed reading a 300 page memoir, composing long lists of questions, practicing them on Leslie, and finally nodding while Gay Talese proved he needs no questions whatsoever.
Lopate! You came! You read! I thought I'd read all your essays and you came and read one I knew nothing about! An essay on kill fees. Brilliant.
Here's a link to a New York Observer article that ran about this event. Things they left out: that Gay was wearing a three-piece suit, that Phillip Lopate sat on the supper club swing and began to swing, that Anna read a marvelous essay about love-hating (but mostly hating) Murray Hill, and that Leslie Jamison read a bonus piece called, "Seattle Poem!" (I take the liberty of adding that exclamation point because when Leslie first told me about "Seattle Poem" she was positively exclamatory.)
Mark: master chef. Artist behind the soup, the ribs, and the lamb chop Mr. Talese requested.
Off Assignment.
We have a logo people. Thank you Susan Easton and Andy Omel! And with endless gratitude to Alfred Megally, our devoted pro-bono web developer, who continues to help us from places like Cartagena and Chiang Mai. You should buy one of his hats.
Best American Travel Writing 2013.
I fell straight backwards when I found out I was in this book. Luckily my bed was right behind me and my comforter is down. So it was a soft flop. I laid there a while, eyes closed, just in case it wasn't true. Then I was ready to reread the email and believe what it said. Mega thanks to Hattie Fletcher, my editor at Creative Nonfiction, who pushed me in all the right ways to bring my essay "Blot Out" to fruition. And of course Jason Wilson and Elizabeth Gilbert for finding me in the pile.
"Still, though, I think the most dangerous story in this collection is Colleen Kinder's essay "Blot Out"--about her experiences walking through the streets of Cairo as a woman, both covered and uncovered. The risks that she took on the day she describes here are staggering in their audacity. An older woman--knowing more of men's potential savagery and infused with a more ingrained sense of self-protection--probably would not have done what she did. I myself would rather run with the bulls every afternoon for a month than expose myself to the potential of such true and vicious physical violence. And yet the ending is so victorious! A victory over violation! A victory over the absurd and the oppressive, both!"
- Elizabeth Gilbert, preface to Best American Travel Writing
Off Assignment: Fall Event
"Letters to Strangers" Night
Mary Morris, Ted Conover, David Farley & Tony Perrotet, and Yours Truly.
Off Assignment came out of the closet on October 8th. There were tea candles, there were whiskey drinks, there were lots and lots of people, bless them one and all. It was a thrill to present the concept of Off Assignment, and to give people a taste of one of our signature essays, "letters to a stranger." Mary, Ted and I all read "letters," -- epistolary essays in the second person, addressing a person we hardly know but can't quit thinking about. I wrote to a little girl in Havana, Ted wrote to a woman on the Rwandan border, and Mary to a stranger in the Charles de Gaulle airport, who told her how cannibals cook humans. Half-time humor was provided by dynamo team Tony & Farley.
Special thanks to Emily Wunderlich, the host of this marvelous reading series, for believing that Off Assignment is indeed a thing, and to Ryan Britt for putting us in touch!
"AROUND THE WORLD (!) VOYAGE."
I just signed on a dotted line to teach on next year's UVA Semester at Sea "around the world" voyage. Speaking of dotted lines, check out the one above. Couldn't it totally pass for Vasco De Gama's? Perhaps if we drew some dragons in the ocean?
Thanks, as ever, to Margaret Spillane, my mentor of many years, for floating (!) this opportunity my way. Margaret you prove season after season that good mentors absolutely shift lives.