Russell Banks (b. 1940) is the author of fifteen books, including Continental Drift (1985) and Cloudsplitter (1988), both of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, and Affliction (1989) and The Sweet Hereafter (1991), which were made into acclaimed feature films. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Banks, who is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, lives in upstate New York.
British rock journalist and historian Nik Cohn (b. 1946) always felt “an instinctive attraction” to Savannah, years before he visited the city in 1995 for Condé Nast Traveler. “Savannah has elaborate good manners, but a risky heart—a combination I’ve always found alluring,” he says. The author of thirteen books, including Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other England (1999) and, most recently, Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap (2005), Cohn lives in Shelter Island, New York.
Born in Scotland, travel writer and historian William Dalrymple (b. 1965) now divides his time between London and New Delhi, where he lived for six years while researching his critically acclaimed 1993 book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. He is the author of six other titles, including 2002’s White Mughals and, recently, 2006’s The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857.
Journalist Philip Gourevitch (b. 1961) spent years as a foreign correspondent in Africa. His 1998 book about the horrors of the Rwandan genocide (and the United Nations’ failure to stop it), We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, was awarded numerous honors, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In visiting the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania for Condé Nast Traveler, Gourevitch was able to see the continent anew, as “an untouristed wilderness where the animals [were] as surprised to see me as I was them.” Gourevitch lives in New York City, where he is editor in chief of The Paris Review and a contributor to The New Yorker. He is also the author of 2001’s A Cold Case, a chronicle of an unsolved murder.
Novelist Shirley Hazzard (b. 1931) is the author of ten books, including 1980’s The Transit of Venus (which received the National Book Critics Circle Award); 2003’s The Great Fire (which received the National Book Award); and 2000’s Greene on Capri, a memoir of her complicated friendship with the novelist Graham Greene. Hazzard, who was raised in Australia, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She divides her time between New York and southern Italy.
Renowned cultural critic Robert Hughes (b. 1938) has been an art critic for Time magazine for more than thirty years and has authored ten books of nonfiction, including the highly influential The Shock of the New (1981); The Fatal Shore (1987), a history of his native Australia; Heaven and Hell in Western Art (1968); Goya (2003), a biography of the artist; and Things I Didn’t Know (2006), a memoir. Hughes, who now lives in New York City, has been awarded countless literary prizes and distinctions, most recently an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In his nineteen years as a Condé Nast Traveler contributing editor, Pico Iyer (b. 1957) has reported on destinations from Argentina and Vietnam to Cambodia and Bolivia. Ethiopia, which he visited and profiled in 1994, was, he says, “among the most memorable places I’ve seen, with a spirit of intensity and devotion, a lit-up ardor, that I still haven’t seen anywhere else.” Iyer, who was born in Oxford, England, and now divides his time between Japan and California, is the author of six travel books (including 1988’s Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East and 1991’s The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto) and two novels, including Cuba and the Night (1995). A contributor to Time since 1982, he also contributes to The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and the Financial Times, among other publications.
Nicole Krauss (b. 1974) felt some hesitation about going to Japan for fear that the “strange and beautiful” pictures of her imagination would be erased. “But the Japan I found was far more spectacular than the Japan I’d invented,” she says. Krauss, a poet and novelist, is the author of two works of fiction, Man Walks Into a Room (2002) and the best-selling The History of Love (2005). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and Esquire. She lives in Brooklyn.
Even after his travels through the Himalayas, Suketu Mehta (b. 1963) managed to retain a measured optimism about the region’s future. “I think that pockets of this environment can be preserved,” says Mehta, who was born in Calcutta, “but the local people really need to be trusted and listened to.” Mehta, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, is the author of 2004’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has also been awarded a Kiriyama Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, and an O. Henry Award, among others. He is currently at work on a screenplay.
Jan Morris (b. 1926) is the author of thirty-six books, including the highly acclaimed Pax Britannica trilogy (1968–78), a history of the British Empire; Last Letters from Hav (1985); and portraits of cit ies such as Manhattan, Hong Kong, Venice, and Oxford, among others. She is also the author of a memoir, Conundrum (1974). Morris’s most recent book is Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001), a meditation on the ancient Adriatic city. Recently awarded a Golden PEN Award for lifetime achievement, Morris lives in Wales.
After serving in the British Foreign Service, John Julius Norwich (b. 1929) began a literary career with his first book, The Normans in the South (1967), which was later republished, along with The Kingdom in the Sun (1970), in a volume entitled The Normans in Sicily (1992). An expert on the Byzantium age, he is also the author of Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988); Byzantium: The Apogee (1992); and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (1995), among numerous other titles. He currently lives in England and is co-chairman of the World Monuments Fund in Britain, for which he has lectured on the preservation of the city of Venice.
The author of twenty-four books, Edna O’Brien (b. 1930) made her literary debut with The Country Girls Trilogy (1960–64), which was widely acclaimed despite being banned in her native Ireland. Her novel Lantern Slides was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1990. O’Brien, who has also written numerous plays, children’s books, and essays, lives in Ireland, where she is an adjunct professor of creative writing at University College in Dublin.
The author of nineteen books of fiction, criticism, and biography, including Hunters and Gatherers (1995), The Peaceable Kingdom: Stories (1993), and the National Book Award–nominated The Blue Angel (2000), Francine Prose (b. 1947) lives in New York City, and contributes essays and criticism to a number of publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Gregor von Rezzori (d. 1998), the late novelist, essayist, and memoirist, often wrote about the changing political geographic landscapes of his native Eastern European homeland. Born in 1914 in Bukovina (at the time, part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire), he later became a Romanian citizen. He is the author of more than twenty books, the best known of which is Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories (1969), inspired by his coming-of-age in prewar Europe.
Poet and essayist Patricia Storace (b. 1956) spent a year living in Athens before recounting her time abroad for the magazine. “I lived in a neighborhood full of domineering old ladies,” she says. “Athenians spend as much time as possible outdoors, acting out a kind of novel on the streets.” A longtime contributor to Condé Nast Traveler, Storace has also written numerous pieces for The New York Review of Books, among other publications. She is the author of Heredity (1987), a collection of poetry, Dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece (1996), and a children’s book, Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel (2007).
James Truman (b. 1958), the former editorial director of Condé Nast Publications, has long been drawn to the texture of Iran—its music, the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, the landscapes, and the mosques. His 2002 journey for the magazine traced the last 2,500 years of Persian history. “Even on a preplanned itinerary, Iran is a source of constant surprise,” says Truman. “Hospitality is considered a great social virtue, and you’ll find yourself being invited into people’s homes, where—unlike in public—they’ll openly talk about their lives and feelings toward the Islamic regime.” Truman, who was also the editor in chief of Details magazine, most recently served as C.E.O. of LTB Media, where he launched the magazine Culture & Travel. He lives in New York City.
Edmund White (b. 1940), a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, lives in New York City and is the author of twenty-one books, including the memoirs A Boy’s Own Story (1982) and The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988); the biography Genet (1993), for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the short story collection Skinned Alive (1995). In 1993, White was made a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. His most recent autobiography, My Lives, was published in 2005.
Author, journalist, and broadcaster Simon Winchester (b. 1944) has been a contributing editor to Condé Nast Traveler since its launch in 1987. A best-selling author, he has written twenty books of travel writing, history, and biography, including 1998’s The Professor and the Madman, 2001’s The Map That Changed the World, and, most recently, 2005’s A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. A frequent broadcast and, radio presence (most notably on BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent” program, to which he is a regular contributor), Winchester is also a sought-after lecturer; recent appearances have included those before London’s Royal Geographical Society, of which he is a fellow. In 2006, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He lives in New York City and the Berkshires.