Ezine Interview: Traverse Magazine
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This is an edited version of a forum thread which ran on 5th October 2007. It's the second in a series of forum interviews where ER members are invited to participate in question and answer sessions with respected literary magazines, journals and zines.
David Miller is editor of Traverse, a biweekly Ezine produced by Matador Travel, which features stories of people, places, travel, adventure, and culture. Essentially a community of travelers, writers and artists, Matador espouses an eclectic mix of cultural exchange and reportage alongside a philosophy encompassing earth-friendly travel, cultural respect and community empowerment. As the community's mouthpiece, Traverse contains a broad range of writing reflecting these themes. From Haight Ashbury to the Himalayas, from Glastonbury Festival to Guatemala, Traverse maintains a truly global perspective.
"Travel is a vehicle for uniting individual voices, minds, and ideas. As travelers, we are, in a sense, freelance ambassadors; not only do we return with stories of other cultures and ways of life, but we also share our own culture and ways of life with the people we meet along the way. We at Matador believe this exchange is essential to bringing about positive development in our rapidly changing world."
Check out some of these stories here
(NB* Thought the following thread has been edited, some typographical quirks and chronological inconsistencies have been preserved to retain the 'live' flavour of this transaction. Remember to keep hitting 'refresh' everybody!!!)
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Sean Merrigan: Ok, we're ready to roll. Gooooooood evening David!
David Miller: Hey Sean, it's good to be here with you.
Sean Merrigan: And you, sir. For the record, where are you, and what's it like there?
David Miller: Here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A stormy spring day. There?
Sean Merrigan: London, United Kingdom. Cold, but not raining (for once).
Sean Merrigan: Ok, let's get started. Traverse Magazine is an offshoot of Matador Travel, which might initially confuse some EditREDants, as Matador is essentially a community of action-seeking adventurers. However, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that writing - in all its forms and genres- is essential to the Matador philosophy. Why don't you start by outlining what this philosophy is?
David Miller: Sure Sean, that's a tough one because each of us at Matador has our own personal philosophies. I'd say collectively our philosophy is that building community is the first step to everything. Making real connections with people both while traveling and at home. Matador is built around the facilitation of community-building. We provide travelers with the tools, unbiased information and real life opportunities to meet like-minded people in the places they are going, cultivate their ideas, and share their experiences with others. Perhaps that's more of a mission than a philosophy, but the idea is the same: we encourage people to connect with one another offline to affect change in the real world, positive change.
Sean Merrigan: I see. So did Traverse (the Ezine) develop out of Matador (the community) or did they happen simultaneously?
David Miller: Traverse developed out of the community. It represents a cross section of the best stories we receive -profiles, first-person narratives, as well as straightforward guides and interviews.
Sean Merrigan: I mean this with upmost respect, but having read some stories on Traverse, I get a real sense that there's something of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy about the operation. This is great, because it can be both eclectic and very specific. I mean, Balkan Beatbox, the Vallenato Festival? One gets a very individual impression of these places and events, far more so than you'd get in a Time Out or a Lonely Planet - is this what you're driving at?
David Miller: That's a great observation. We strive to publish work from writers who are truly grounded in the places they're writing about and I think that shines through in the stories. That's the one unifying thread in all of the writing, I'd say, no matter how diverse and even eclectic the subject matter. It's about passion, and also compassion.
Sean Merrigan: And how has the response been to your call for far-flung stories? Have you ever opened a submission and thought - Wow, I never thought we'd get something from there....
David Miller: You'd think so, and yet people, especially in their 20s, are simply going everywhere, doing everything imaginable. The options available to travelers today and even the mindset that travel can be the ultimate education, simply didn't exist in our parents' and grandparents' generations.
Of course this creates a new dynamic as well. On one hand there are questions about environmental impact and tourism displacing local economies. On the other you have individuals and NGO's helping local communities in new and innovative ways.
Sean Merrigan: Ok. I want to talk more about the business of Ezines (submissions, editorial etc.) shortly, but I think we could expand on the above quite a bit. How do you feel 'travel writing' has developed alongside this greater access to places, especially in terms of the greater awareness we have now regarding the environmental and social aspects of tourism? It used to be all subjective accounts of 'the natives'; what is the dynamic now?
David Miller: A good question. The greater access doesn't necessarily matter. Those who really wanted to see the world and write about it have always done so. You can take it back to Jack London, Hemmingway, or even further back in time. Or more recently Capote, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux. I don't think the access matters so much as the writer's honesty and how he or she conveys the sense of "place." I don't think that's changed.
If there is a new dynamic, I'd have to say it's about that very word, place. Looking for our place in the world is the story of our generation. It echoes in everything we do, including travel and travel writing. Perhaps this is more of an American-centered viewpoint, (as our country has changed so much--a total transformation of entire communities in a single generation), but then travel writing as a genre has always been a mostly American and British tradition.
Sean Merrigan: Yeah, I've always thought of America and Britain as, broadly, cosmopolitan, and I think our cultures' respective histories mean that writers and artists will always always be dealing with this - both the diversity of what goes into being "American" or "British" and also what it means to define yourself as American or British. There's a double-bind between knowing that media is essentially "western-" or "euro-centric" and at the same time wanting to write with integrity about the world. I think, and echoing what I've read on Traverse, that our generation is the first to really adopt a 'transcultural' perspective. Do you agree?
David Miller: I do agree, and I think that wording is very precise. It's very much an "adopted" perspective. It's fascinating really how someone from a completely different culture and background can not only adopt but fully embody and express the views of another. The musician Manu Chao is a good example of this. Here's a guy from Paris who by sheer passion and stoke and time living among the rural people of Latin America is able to express their dreams and realities through his music.
Sean Merrigan: On to submissions. Explain your rather tantalizingly entitled bounty- board...
David Miller: Sure, the
Bounty Board is a resource for both writers and editors. Editors can use the board to post their content / story needs for free, and writers can look for paid assignments, contests, and other opportunities there.
Sean Merrigan: So if an or is interested in, say, Zimbabwean Kwela, and I happen to have 2000 words on the subject, I can submit and get paid for it??
David Miller: That's the gist. Right now the majority of "Bounties" are for Traverse, or for an upcoming section on Matador called the Notebook. Interested writers submit their story ideas and clips and we select a writer for that particular story.
The other magazines posting to the board work the same way - the writers contact those editors directly.
So far it's worked really well. We're finding that writers really appreciate and respond to particular posts. For example, there's one writer who is working on an article about sound-mapping as a new way of defining a space. The article happens to speak perfectly to his particular skillset as both a writer and an electronic music producer.
Sean Merrigan: I very much like this idea - a "writer-and..." because good writing is to do with having some sort of connection with the world - something that has cropped up a few times in this discussion.
So, before we throw this conversation open to the community, lets just sort out a couple of simple editorial guidelines:
When submitting: do publications overlook a few minor typos or errors as long as the writing is super duper? This from Kerosene
David Miller: I have to be honest Kerosene. We get a lot of submissions. There's competition. One or two typos won't count against you if the writing is solid, but sloppy manuscripts don't usually make it too far.
About the submission process overall: we always welcome submissions. However, because we're a community first and foremost, we especially respond to new members who are blogging, commenting, posting photos; in other words, contributing to the community. If you check the profiles of our published writers, you'll find that all of them are regular contributors to matador through their blogs and photography, which ties back into what you were saying Sean, about a "writer-and." The vast majority of our members are involved in various projects, organizations (http://matadortravel.com/search/organization) and use matador as a way of involving the rest of the community.
Before we throw this to the public I'd like to mention that we invite anyone who is a college student to participate in our upcoming writing and photography contest. Details can be found
here
Sean Merrigan: Ahhhh.. Free entry and cash money prizes. David, you came to the right writing community. Now then, who's got a question????
Lola Hi there. this is Lola 'geotraveler' from matador. First off, big props to David for being not only a great editor but also a great mentor throughout the revision process as well.
My question is this: many editors/travel writing magazines have their own styles. What advice would you give a novice travel writer in terms of finding a balance between adhering to the style of the editors/magazines, and also keeping an element of their personality/flair?
David Miller: Yo Lola! great to hear from you! You asked a key question, one I'm still working on in my own career as a writer. It's tough to make it as freelancer if you're not willing to bend your style to fit with the various styles of whatever publications you submit to. Thus it helps to basically eliminate whatever ego might be attached to the writing. One way to do this is to just pour everything out in your own personal writing (i.e. daily journaling, the novel you're working on, etc.) and of course, your blogs, and then look at assignments you're working on for specific audiences as exactly just that -specific assignments for specific audiences. Remember too that almost every literary giant had a background, somewhere along the line, writing for magazines and newspapers etc. It's all about advancing a little bit at a time.
Tim Patterson's recent
interview with Matt Gross talks about this very subject.
thanks lola!
pat browning: Hi David, the zine looks great- tell me - how 'factual' do stories published by Traverse have to be? I'm a fiction writer myself, but I always locate my stories in places I've travelled to and experienced - does Traverse take fiction?
David Miller: Pat, a great question, with a simple answer, no. One of the tenets of creative nonfiction (which is what most if not all of the writing in Traverse is) is that you can't fictionalize the account even slightly - good examples: conflating time and events, inventing dialog. I know rules are meant to be broken but this one has an important creative component to it, mainly, if you fictionalize the story you're actually limiting yourself from telling it as well as it can be told.
There's an interesting flip side to this as well. I believe that in writing fiction, if you're simply recounting the truth, in other words, if it's a pure roman-a-clef, then you're not allowing the characters to develop as "truly" as they would be if opened to your imagination.
David Miller: Pat, I realize you weren't suggesting the "fictionalization" of writing non-fiction, but it just brought that up---thanks.
pat browning: No...that's cool. Thanks for the interesting perspective on creative limitations.
LWPRG Hi David, love the site. I'd just like to know whether Traverse itself accepts submissions of travel-oriented literature? Though I fear my 'adventure-skiing' days are behind me, I'm still quite up for hike as much as any octogenarian. I have at least two riveting pieces on post-oolite geological formations in the lower Dorset region if you'd be interested...
David Miller: Thanks LWPRG. We are always looking for new and diverse perspectives on everything except the lower Dorset region. No, just kidding. Your submissions are welcomed. Please check our story archive here (http://matadortravel.com/travel-writing) for an idea of the kinds of content we publish.
David Miller: Just want to close by saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed here on red.com Thanks Sean and friends, and I hope to hear more from you soon.
Sean Merrigan: And thanks to you David. I wish we could all go out and have a pint to celebrate, but alas, geography makes this impossible.
Lets all raise a (theoretical) glass to David Miller and the rest of the team at Matador, and wish them all the very best with their project.
