The 2024 CGRS Travel Writing Contest results are in and the winners of this year’s contest are:
- 1st Place: “Ti’n Siarad Cymraeg?” by Lydia Montgomery
- 2nd Place: “My Cat, Cloyd” by Anna Frankel
- 3rd Place: “Agnès” by Sarah Raman
- Honorable Mention: “Home” by Narjis Nusaibah
Congratulations to the winners and to all those who participated in the writing contest this year!
A special thank you and shoutout goes to the CGRS Travel Writing Contest sponsors: Cross-Cultural Studies, Dean of Students, Off-Campus Studies, The Center for Global and Regional Studies, and The Writing Center!
Additionally, we want to extend a warm thank you to this year’s internal and external judges, as well as those who played important roles in putting the contest together, including our student workers, Monica Law and Alex Mazur. The external judge for this year, Heather Maher, has spent more than 20 years as a senior journalist at national and international media outlets – reporting, editing, and writing news and features for ABCNews.com, The Atlantic, Radio Free Europe, MSNBC, CNN, The Rotarian, and The Prague Post, among others. While based in Prague, Heather was a visiting journalism instructor in Bosnia for young aspiring reporters from across Eastern Europe, convened the first training conference in CEE for reporters covering trials at the international Criminal Court, and led a writing internship program for students identifying as Romani at the Soros-funded Transitions Online. She also co-authored several city guides to Prague, contributed to a National Geographic Czech Republic travel guide, and wrote for Sawday’s Best Small Places to Stay. As a professional writer and editor, Heather has authored published opinion pieces for an ambassador to the U.S. and head of state, and edited reports for UNESCO. She is currently a senior writer/editor for the Humane Society of the United States-Humane Society International. With all Heather’s experience and accomplishments, we are incredibly grateful and appreciative of her time spent as this year’s external judge. Thank you again, Heather!
And lastly, congratulations again to our winners; your entries were a joy to read, thank you for sharing your adventures and travel with us! Read our external judge’s comments below!
1st Place: “Ti’n Siarad Cymraeg?” by Lydia Montgomery
Exhilarating. I disappeared into Wales as I read, but not just Wales: I went to a festival, stood in a gravel parking lot at dusk, rode a nearly empty bus over a hilly peninsula, and wandered a night garden of fruit trees. I also rode an emotional rollercoaster: exhaustion and despair, frustration, hope, resignation, and relief, and was 100% invested in the author reaching their destination safely.
As a piece of travel writing, this succeeds. The semi-desperate situation of trying to find the right transportation and arrange emergency lodging will be familiar to anyone who has roamed solo in a remote part of the world seeking adventure and enlightenment, only to be defeated by logistics and loneliness. I loved the honesty of the author’s account and appreciated the lack of hyperbole and self-pity. The interweaving of destination-specific details was also done well; illuminating facts about the geography of Wales, the Welsh language, and Celtic history gave context and a sense of place.
There’s a small joy in coming across one’s own experience in another’s text—maybe it’s getting a glimpse of our shared human condition. What solo traveler hasn’t felt frustration trying to converse with kind strangers in another language, fear watching a phone battery drain, or hollowness when you realize you’ve stayed too long in a place that once appealed but suddenly seems strange and awful?
More importantly, if a reader hasn’t experienced such things, the author writes in such a warm and inviting way that it’s effortless to stand in their shoes. That’s good travel writing.
❤️FAVORITE SENTENCE ❤️
“I have been at turns fascinated, overjoyed, deeply lonely, and awed. And now, I really needed to leave.”
2nd Place: “My Cat, Cloyd” by Anna Frankel
I liked the pacing and structure of this essay; it pulled me in and kept my interest throughout. Right at the outset, the vivid description of the interior of the house produced an accompanying image in my mind, answering in the affirmative the inevitable question that hangs over every new piece of writing for me: do you trust the author’s voice? I was transported to a new place, a crucial element of travel writing.
I loved the small observations about Marcella: her fuzzy slippers and Mickey Mouse blanket, how she shared her Oreos, talked to the cat when she thought no one was listening, fed strays, worried about chewed-up hair ties. These are well-chosen, endearing details that reveal Marcella’s deeper nature: she cares about the people and animals who come into her life. It was notable to me that while the author is at the center of the essay—writing from the POV of a student on a homestay abroad—they don’t center the essay on themselves. There are keenly observed descriptions of behavior and scenes of domestic contentment that don’t read as filtered through a personal lens. I was as curious about Marcella and José—not to mention Cloyd!—as I was about the writer.
That’s why I wished this essay had revealed more than it did about the author’s personal experience and where they were for three months. We only get a hint of the former at the end, when we learn they are “trying to forget about the suitcase and duffel bag that sat packed and ready by the front door,” and become teary-eyed knowing the stay is over. I wondered why they were sad to leave instead of eager to get home. And whether, as with Cloyd, the author had struggled with feeling accepted in other situations during their time in Chile, and if so, why, and if not, also why? Either example would have widened the essay out and provided an interesting contrast or relevant parallel to the central focus of the essay: the evolution of their relationship with Cloyd, which by the end, felt a bit anticlimactic.
Beyond that, I wanted more detail about where they were in Chile. Even mundane experiences like shopping for groceries or interacting with locals become interesting in a new and foreign place because they challenge us and test skill sets we mastered long ago. Writing about how you overcame (or were stymied by) those challenges, and maybe more interestingly, how they made you feel, is a natural jumping off point for writing about where you are: the people, the place, the language, the traditions, the food, anything. Even the weather. So, ultimately for me, though I enjoyed reading it, this piece lacked something essential for it to be placed firmly within the travel writing oeuvre.
❤️FAVORITE SENTENCE ❤️
“But I occasionally peered over to find Cloyd perched on Marcela’s lap, the two of them looking oddly similar with their black hair, straight backs, and wide eyes fixed on the TV screen.”
3rd Place: “Agnès” by Sarah Raman
I first want to acknowledge that this essay concerns what seems to have been a difficult life experience for the author. I appreciate the work and emotional effort it must have taken to write about it.
This read to me more like a short story than personal travel essay because it focuses almost exclusively on a strained friendship and the location—Paris, one of the world’s most fascinating cities—is so lightly evoked. There are some missed opportunities to bring the reader to France: a quick tutorial on French political controversies when Agnès refers to the yellow vest movement, some insight into traditional French meal planning in the (well-written) scene that peeks into shoppers’ baskets in the bio co-op.
The essay strays further from form with its use of word-for-word dialogue. One or two quotes or memorable exchanges sprinkled in an experience-based essay can really make a section sing or resonate with a reader, but multiple exact quotes almost inevitably begs the question: how did the author remember whole conversations verbatim? Paraphrasing things said to you, that you heard, or that you yourself said, almost always reads as more authentic. As I passed the front desk, the owner asked me if I had an umbrella, saying the forecast had turned. No, no, I told her, I loved walking in the rain. She looked at me skeptically.“Do you, now?” she asked, in a lilting brogue. I knew to expect rainy weather when I decided to hike in the Highlands in October, I said, pointing to my sturdy waterproof boots. She just nodded. I had no idea what I was in for, but she did.
The author makes it clear at the start of the essay that their trip to Paris curdled the instant their old friend expressed some unexpected political and social views. That unbridled disappointment sets a heavy tone for the rest of the piece, one that ultimately ends up weighing it down; there’s nowhere for it to go because there’s no hope for redemption. That’s a bit of a risk if you want readers to keep reading.
There’s also a risk in portraying a woman who has lost her marriage and her home, shares a bed with her daughter in a tiny flat and works at a grocery store, as a sort of caricature. Many heavy-handed passages cast Agnès in a negative light: she refers to her daughter as “a real bitch” and snaps and frowns at her, is “disappointed” no one wants to drink wine with her at lunch, sneaks cigarettes at work, and suggests things with “such finality” the author feels she’s lost her free will. At one point, I felt my sympathies shift to Agnès, which is surely not what the author intended.
I thought the scene on the bus that ends, “I turned my eyes to the window and wondered what she saw” was excellent and wanted more. I wanted the author to go on—why did they feel so tense (e.g., I was appalled by her views and knew I couldn’t separate them from our friendship)? What did Agnès’ spartan flat and bitterness toward their ex teach them about the toll life can take on a person? Or what they learned about why French workers protest the government’s policies, based on their friend’s lived experience? I was sure the author would have interesting things to say—their’s is a sharp and observant voice.
❤️FAVORITE SENTENCE ❤️
“I nodded and set to work, reveling in the novelty of the task. Me, at a French grocery store, on a Sunday morning, hard at work! I fixated hard on the brussels sprouts, tuning out the small talk happening around the store. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I found a sense of calm.”