Traveling as a writer, and awkward book-tour experiences, with Anthony Doerr (from 2012)

About this episode

Rolf Potts interviews Anthony Doerr about the nuances of travel writing and the challenges of book tours.

“I’m interested in writing because I don’t want to sleepwalk through life. I feel like we have an appallingly brief time on earth, and we’re here to see and understand and do as much good as we can before we’re gone.” –Anthony Doerr In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Anthony talk about how the pace of travel changes the experience of travel, and what it’s like to travel as a writer (2:45); how to manage the local and the global, the specific and the universal, the concrete and the speculative, in one’s writing (12:30); how the idea of “home” influences one’s craft as a writer who travels (23:00); common mistakes writers make when writing about places and cultures they don’t know well, and humiliating travel (and book-tour) experiences (31:00). Anthony Doerr is a novelist and essayist, and short story writer. His 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was made into a Netflix miniseries in 2023. Books and authors mentioned: Four Seasons in Rome, by Anthony Doerr (book) The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book) Daniel Woodrell (novelist) Aimee Nezhukumatathil (poet and essayist) Benjamin Percy (author, essayist and comic book writer) Paul…

People in this episode

Host: Rolf Potts

Guest: Anthony Doerr

Topics covered

• travel writing
• home and identity
• cultural understanding
• book tours
• writing mistakes
• literary influences

Keywords

• travel
• writing
• Anthony Doerr
• book tour
• cultural mistakes
• home
• literature

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: All the Light We Cannot See, Four Seasons in Rome, The Vagabond’s Way, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, Travels in Alaska, Lolita

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