The Women Bringing Travel Writing Back to Print

One of the most rewarding aspects of my work with Pink Pangea is the opportunity to build lasting relationships with the women who participate in our retreats. Many become valued members of our community, friends, and professional partners on travel-related projects. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed watching members of our community stay connected, support one another, and find new ways to work together in the travel world.

That’s why I was delighted to learn that two members of the Pink Pangea community, Elen and Hana, have joined forces with four fellow travel writers to launch Rewrite Travel, an innovative venture that brings travel stories directly to readers through traditional mail.

I spoke with Elen and Hana to learn more about the inspiration behind Rewrite Travel, how the idea took shape, and what they hope to offer readers in an evolving travel media landscape. Our conversation explored the power of personal storytelling, the enduring appeal of print, and the importance of creating new opportunities for travel writers. Here’s a glimpse into our conversation.

You first met at a Pink Pangea meet-up in New York. What do you remember about that day, and how did your friendship grow from there?

We met in New York City at a Pink Pangea meetup, either at the end of 2014 or at the beginning of 2015–neither of us can quite remember! 

Elen was living in upstate NY at the time, and getting ready to go on Pink Pangea’s Costa Rica retreat and had been in touch with Jackie, but hadn’t met her yet, so thought the meetup in NY would be a good idea before heading off to Costa Rica. 

Hana was just visiting the US at the time, while living in Mexico. We met for coffee and had a chat, and connected on social media, as you do. We always stayed in touch, and our professional lives kept us in touch over the years. We’ve shared job opportunities with each other, commissioned writing, worked on one-off projects, and now are launching Rewrite Travel!

How did six writers who met online decide to build something together? Tell us about Rewrite Travel.

Most of the Rewrite Travel founders “met” online through various travel writer groups, and like Hana and Elen, some have also met in person.

 Over the years, the space for quality travel journalism has declined. Budgets have been slashed, editors have been let go, requirements of SEO and that kind of thing have become tighter. As it got harder and harder to place good stories, even with strong writing skills and editorial contacts, we had long felt that we could do something differently. A website? A magazine? A group of us who knew each other from online travel writer groups explored different ideas, but they all kept coming back to the same problems: funding, distribution, the balance between creative freedom and funding. A venture that allowed creative freedom wouldn’t necessarily pay the bills; a lucrative venture might require creative compromises.

Then Hana brought in Alice, who she knew from her successful travel blog, Teacake Travels. She had a great idea to start a travel mail club, and we had been looking for a project that allowed us to be ourselves, to write for ourselves and our audience directly without jumping through corporate hoops. 

The mail club seemed like a perfect solution. And Rewrite Travel was born! It took several months of brainstorming and discussions, but we’ve now just launched and are preparing our first issue to go out in November!

I love that you’re using snail mail! What does paper give readers that a screen can’t?

We recognise the value of web publications and the digital world, but we also see that there’s an increasing desire to go back to an analog world–at least in some small ways. We’re all millennials (some of us firmly “elder” millennial and some younger!) so we all remember our analog childhoods, before widespread use of the internet. 

We remember having penpals, sending stickers and stamps in the mail, and waiting days or weeks in anticipation for what we would receive next. Gratification wasn’t always instant, as it can be now. Our kids (Hana and Elen are both parents) don’t live in that same world, they will probably never know that world, but we see there’s a desire for this older form of communication, where some good things take time.

How do you choose each month’s destination and whose story runs?

The destinations have been carefully thought out. We’ve already selected our first year of destinations–although we can’t share anything with you right now. Each month’s destination is a surprise. 

The six of us, between us, have travelled pretty much the whole world, and there are many places close to our hearts. Our first issues feature destinations that are meaningful to us: maybe places we’ve lived, are currently living, or where we’ve spent a lot of time. This has enabled us to write from the heart and what is important to us. We haven’t had to research keywords or search volumes or what’s trending. We haven’t just selected destinations that are currently “trending”, but we haven’t necessarily gone with the most off-the-beaten-path spots, either. 

They’re places that readers will be interested in, but may not know all that much about. We’ve also thought about providing a mix of places so readers can travel vicariously: when there’s a holiday coming up, we’ve thought about where people might want to read about. If it’s colder where most of our readers live, we’ve thought about providing them with warm-weather content for inspiration!

When pitching a travel article to a magazine, we’re always restricted by what they’re interested in, what’s trending, or where they deem to be the place to write about now. For Rewrite Travel, we’ve chosen the destinations tied to our own stories.

With AI everywhere right now, how do you see it changing the travel writing world?

A lot of people are using AI for travel planning, but that doesn’t make personal travel stories redundant. Sometimes, a heartfelt personal story about a real trip or special place can be more inspirational than a cookie-cutter list of things to see and restaurants to eat at. And that inspiration extends beyond just travel planning, or research for an upcoming trip. Personal stories give you insights into a different way of seeing the world, and AI can’t provide that.

Was being all-female intentional from day one? What does it bring to the stories?

It’s an all-female group because we all “met” via online travel writing groups that themselves were for women. In many ways, women are still marginalised in the travel world, and the travel writing world. 

Hana and Elen are both mothers, too, which further shapes the way we can and do travel. We can’t go on press trips the way many travel writers do to earn their living. But we’re still writers, and we still travel. 

We want to share our stories, for our own sakes but also so other women like us can see that they’re not alone. The other four members of Rewrite Travel aren’t parents, but they each have their own perspectives, partly shaped by their gender. We don’t claim to represent all women–nobody could do that–but we do bring particular female life experiences to our stories.

Who do you picture opening the envelope?

We know that our first subscribers are a pretty diverse bunch: we’ve got sign-ups from some places that you might expect, like the UK, US, and Australia, but also from Singapore, Cape Verde, South Africa, Portugal, India, Finland, France, the Faroe Islands!

We think that most subscribers will probably be a bit like us: millennial women, keen travellers but perhaps not professional travellers. They like to take trips, but aren’t all living nomadic lives. They have day jobs. Maybe kids, too. They enjoy arts and crafts, good food, and enjoy learning about the local culture when they travel. They’re curious, and perhaps don’t travel as much as they’d like to because life happens (and budgets are a real thing!) but they like to be inspired. They like to read about travel, but perhaps sitting down at the end of a long day and reading on a screen doesn’t seem all that appealing. So they can find a comfy seat and curl up with a cup of tea (or a wine!) while reading our snail mail. 

To join, sign up here: https://mailclubly.com/@rewritetravel.

Will you open the club to guest writers?

That’s possible in the long run, but we’re not planning it right now. We are six writers with a wealth of our own travel stories to tell. But we want to create a solid community around Rewrite Travel. 

We want subscribers to share their travel experiences on social media, and let us know their thoughts about our packages. Long-term, we love the idea of hosting meetups around the world, of the kind that Hana and Elen met at! And because we’re six writers based in very different places–New Zealand, the US, the UK, Vietnam, and Colombia–there’s so much potential!

 

Top photo credit by Pexels. For more information about Rewrite Travel visit: www.mailclubly.com/@rewritetravel