Katie Dancey-Downs on Chasing Baltic Legends, Book Banning, and the Travel Writing Career

Intrepid Times commissioned Emese Maczko to write a story on The Slovenian Alpine Village Where the Simple Life is Anything But Simple (https://intrepidtimes.com/2026/11/the-slovenian-alpine-village-where-the-simple-life-is-anything-but-simple/) as part of our 'Professional' travel stories series. She showed how, were it not for tourism, a whole way of life would have evaporated. In a context where travel is often condemned as unsustainable, her reporting shines a light on the positive side. Emese joined the Travel Writing Podcast to speak about her story, the positive role travel can play in sustaining culture, how to tell the difference between genuine and bogus eco-tourism claims, and how she broke into travel writing as a writer with English as a second language. Emese Maczko is a Hungarian freelance travel writer and photographer specializing in sustainable travel, ecotourism and family travel. She is the founder of Eco Lodges Anywhere with bylines in Forbes, National Geographic, Euronews Travel and Adventure.com. She also holds a Professional Certificate in Sustainable Tourism from the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). Her Instagram is https://instagram.com/https://www.instagram.com/emesemaczko/. Her website is https://emesemaczko.com/

What does it mean to be a travel writer when the place you're exploring is also your (adopted) home? In 1982, British journalist Tim Bird arrived in Finland to teach English, expecting to stay for a year. More than four decades later, he's still there. In this episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Tim joins us to discuss his new book, Happy Land: Finding My Inner Finn. We talk about what Finnish happiness really means, the peculiar experience of becoming an insider in a foreign country, and the opportunities and challenges of writing about a place you have (gradually) come to know intimately. We also talk about what a Victorian travel writer can teach us about seeing familiar places with fresh eyes. Happy Land is available from Eye Books at https://www.eyebooksgroup.com/products/happy-land

Michael Venutolo-Mantovani is a writer and musician who writes about a variety of things, most of all, travel and bicycling. His writing has been featured in National Geographic, the New York Times, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and many others. Michael joined the Travel Writing Podcast to take readers behind the scenes on his Intrepid Times story on Frank Zappa, how he teaches students about the business of being a freelance writer, his thoughts about the right to tell other people's stories, and how creatives survive in today's expensive and competitive world. Michael recently started publishing The Itinérance (https://theitinerance.substack.com/), a newsletter where he writes about his travels and interviews travelers he knows and admires, always asking the same question: "Tell me about the best day you ever had traveling." Though he was raised in New Jersey and called New York City home for many years, Michael now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife and their children. Learn more about Michael at https://www.therealmichaelvm.com/ Read Why is Frank Zappa Watching Over Vilnius, Lithuania? https://intrepidtimes.com/2026/09/why-is-frank-zappa-watching-over-vilnius-lithuania/

Imogen Lepere has been named Sustainability Travel Writer of the Year three years running, winning at the Travel Media Awards in 2024 and 2025 and the TravMedia Awards in 2026. Making a valiant effort to balance her love of travel with her passion for sustainability, she authored The Ethical Traveller (2022), followed by Viva Mexico! (2024). Behind the books and the articles in prestigious publications, however, challenges were mounting. Following a dangerous incident in Mexico and while managing a persistent, energy-draining illness, Imogen made the decision to return to the United Kingdom, establish a home in Devon, and step back from life on the road. On the Travel Writing Podcast, Imogen joins us for a frank conversation about the realities of ethical and sustainable travel today, the growing appeal of memoir writing as a way for people, especially women, to make sense of their lives, the difference between writing about a place and connecting with its community, and the book she is now working on. Follow Imogen's newsletter, Hi Horizon, at https://hi-horizon.ghost.io/

A few months ago, Intrepid Times opened its first round of Professional Submissions, inviting experienced travel writers to contribute narrative travel writing they genuinely believed in. Rather than chasing trends or keywords, we wanted to create space for celebrated writers to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they most wanted to tell. One of the first pieces we published through the series was Katie Dancey-Downs’ I Chased Legends Across Two Baltic Cities. In this episode, we go behind the scenes of that story, tracing how it developed from an initial idea and pitch into the finished article. We also talk about Katie’s fantastically varied writing career, her recent work as deputy editor of Index on Censorship, and her experience writing for outlets including the BBC, National Geographic Traveller and Smithsonian, covering everything from the gloriously chaotic world of Eurovision to more serious issues such as refugee communities and the ongoing crisis of book banning. Learn more about Katie at her website: https://www.katiedancey.co.uk/

Why do Maltese Christians speak a language descended from Arabic? Why were some of medieval Spain’s Muslim rulers red-haired and blue-eyed? And how did Viking-descended Christians in Sicily become thoroughly Arabised? By looking at Europe through an Islamic lens, travel writer Tharik Hussain uncovers a whole world of history that other travellers might just brush past. Tharik is the author of Minarets in the Mountains and Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History, and has written for outlets including BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveller, Lonely Planet and Geographical.

Across 24 books (and counting), Peter Naldrett has explored Britain’s coast, its islands, underground worlds, film locations, cities and stranger corners. His latest book, Spooky Britain, takes readers to 100 of the UK’s most eerie and mysterious places. On the Travel Writing Podcast, Peter discusses his career as an author, why books have become his preferred way to make a living as a writer, his journey from starting out to being repeatedly commissioned by major publishers including Conway (Bloomsbury), and how he balances writing and travel with family life and fatherhood. Learn more about Peter at peter-naldrett.co.uk. Find Spooky Britain:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spooky-Britain-Eerie-Mysterious-Places/dp/1844867609

Behind the travel coverage you see in most major publications is an intense and complicated web of publicists, PR firms, tour companies and press trips that help make it all happen. With AI now in the mix, and the content ecosystem being disrupted more than at any point since the advent of the internet, what opportunities still exist for travel writers? And how can human content creators stand out, stay relevant, and get hired? Brianne Miers is a leading travel public relations strategist and successful travel blogger who knows how things really work behind the scenes. In this forthright conversation, she explains what travel PRs really want from writers, and what travel writers need to know (and do!) to keep getting opportunities. Follow Brianne's travels at https://www.atravelinglife.com/

Most travel advice is meant to be one-size-fits-all. But what if your mind doesn't quite work the way everyone else's seems to? Rebecca Hallett's life suddenly made a lot more sense when, as an adult, she was diagnosed with ADHD. A prolific traveller and travel writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Times and Wanderlust, she had long thought that traits such as restlessness, struggles with deadlines and time blindness were simply character flaws. She didn't realise they were symptoms. In this week's episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Rebecca talks about her new Rough Guides book, Travelling with ADHD, and how neurodiversity influences the experience of travel at every stage of the journey. We talk about her work as a Japan travel specialist, writing guides for major travel publishers such as DK and Rough Guides, and making a freelance writing life work. Listeners can use the code AUTHOR0026 for 30% off the standard price of books in the Rough Guides bookshop, including Travelling with ADHD and the new Rough Guide to Japan, to which Rebecca once again contributed. https://shop.roughguides.com/book/rough-guides-travel-edit-travelling-with-adhd/9781835295243 https://shop.roughguides.com/book/rough-guide-japan/9781835295328

A traveller on the Hippy Trail in the 1970s, Alex McKay became bewitched by mysterious tales of Tibet’s holiest mountain, Mount Kailash. What began as a backpacker’s fixation eventually became an academic vocation. After studying Tibetan history and culture at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Alex earned a PhD in South Asian History and went on to publish four academic monographs and around forty scholarly articles, peeling back the layers of history and mythology surrounding a mountain revered by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bön. But there were things academic writing couldn’t capture. As Alex writes in his latest book, In Search of Mount Kailash: “An academic monograph can cite a century-old Tibetan letter but cannot show its author warming ink over a candle in a Himalayan winter; nor convey the historian unfolding it and watching Tibetan dust fall onto a polished library table.” For that, Alex turned to travel writing. In Search of Mount Kailash retraces both his journeys through Tibet and the Himalayas and the decades-long intellectual journey that followed, exploring how the legends surrounding Kailash developed and what happens when scholarship collides with lived experience. The book won the 2025 Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for Himalayan Literature. On today’s episode of the Travel Writing Podcast, Alex discusses what travel writing can reveal that scholarship cannot, the reaction to some of his more controversial discoveries about Kailash, the writers who inspired his own travels, and a lifetime of adventures in the Himalayas — including what it’s like to take LSD on a holy mountain.