Jerry Camarillo Dunn Jr. is an award winning writer who has authored many books and hundreds of articles and feature stories for national magazines and newspapers. He was worked for 25 years with National Geographic, first as an editor, writer, and columnist for Traveler magazine, then as an author of guidebooks.
My Favorite Place on Earth, by Jerry Dunn
Jerry Dunn’s latest book is My Favorite Place on Earth: Celebrated People Share Their Travel Discoveries, for which he interviewed dozens of celebrities like Natalie Portman, Robin Williams, Donald Trump, and The Dalai Lama.
Jerry got these celebrities to name their favorite place on earth, and recount anecdotes and things they loved about their favorite place.
Published below are a few questions he answers about how he came up with the idea for the book, how difficult it was to corner all the celebrities and make them talk, and some travel writing tips.
Question: How did you come up with the idea for the book? And why hasn’t anyone done this before?
Ans: The idea grew out of a question people often ask when they find out I’m a travel writer: “You must have been everywhere. So what’s your favorite place?” I decided to ask this intriguing question of highly accomplished people, so readers could see fascinating places through their eyes.
Hearing the concept, my friends would say, “Great idea!” Then they’d add, “I can’t believe nobody’s done it before!” I have no idea why — I guess it’s one of those “high concept” ideas that is obvious only after somebody thinks of it.
Question: Your favorite place on Earth is Bombay, circa 1970. But if you were asked to name your favorite place in the present, what would that be?
Ans: Slovenia is like Europe was in the 1960s and ’70s — affordable, without a booming tourism industry that swamps the good places with visitors and changes the locals. Slovenia is small scale — you could drive across the whole country in a day, if you wanted to — with alpine peaks, lakes, a cool capital city (Ljubljana, something like Prague ten years ago), caves, and a tiny Mediterranean coast with an Italian flavor. In geographical terms, Slovenia reflects the best of its neighbors: Austria, Italy, Croatia. The people are lovely and glad to see you.
Question: I understand you had to jump through a lot of hoops to herd all these celebrities and their thoughts into the book. Any specific incident with a celebrity which sticks in your mind?
Ans: I sent out hundreds of letters to people I admire, explaining the book and asking them to be part of it. Sometimes success was sublimely easy. The phone would ring and a voice would say, “Natalie Portman would love to talk with you,” or “Jerry, this is Jeff Foxworthy.”
I called on every friend who had even a sixth-degree of separation from a celebrated person I sought. One kind refusal came on heavy stationery engraved with “Buckingham Palace,” and it began, “The Queen has asked me to thank you for your letter . . . “:
Question: I read one of your posts on the Intelligent Travel Blog where you offer helpful tips on how to score interviews with hard to contact celebrities. Now that you have the experience and techniques all figured out, does that mean Jerry Dunn will from now on be hob-nobbing with celebrities? I mean, you could keep coming up with new editions featuring more celebrities. Is that in the works?
Ans: Although the people in the book are definitely celebrities — famous, often wealthy, etc. — what counted for me was that they had done something admirable and interesting. Just being famous, like (fill in your favorite vapid celebrity here), wasn’t enough. I enjoyed talking with everyone in My Favorite Place on Earth because we had genuine conversations about something each one cared about. If I could maintain that level, I’d certainly do a follow-up book.
Question: You teach, or used to teach, a travel writing workshop in Santa Barbara. I read your note which says that “good writing sells itself, about 2/3 of the workshop is spent on writing; the rest focuses on marketing your stories, doing field work, interviewing, and so on.” When you look back at all the aspects of ‘Favorite Places’, would you say it was more about the concept and the field work, as opposed to simply good writing?
Ans: I still teach travel writing (Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Magellan’s, etc.), but the chapters in My Favorite Place on Earth rely on interview techniques and on shaping the material. I taped and transcribed my interviews with everyone in the book. The writing job was to take a typical verbatim conversation — which usually rambles and goes off on side tracks — and turn it into a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Meanwhile, I’d look for a theme underlying the person’s account of the place, and try to highlight it. In the end, I hope each chapter has its own shape, maintains the famous person’s voice, and illuminates both the person and the place.
Question: Related question – Travel writing for the web – With widespread wi-fi and travel publishers offering downloadable online versions of guides, does good writing mean as much on the internet, where attention spans are so fleeting? Should travel writers have different strategies for guidebooks which end up on the internet and those which come out in print?
Ans: The web is a short-attention-span theater, with distractions in every aisle. Printed material rewards sustained focus. Writing for the web means thinking in blurbs. Writing for print means thinking in terms of telling a complete story. All that said, people who write for the Web should write well for that format — brevity and wit count, along with the skill to pack a gallon of information into a pint pot.
Question: You’ve been in the travel writing business for 25 years now, and you’re quite successful at it. What’s your secret?
Ans: Sit down and work every day. It’s like being a plumber; if you don’t show up at the job site, you don’t get paid.
Question: What’s next for Jerry Dunn? Is there another book in the pipeline?
Ans: Several good ideas — but I may veer off into professional speaking, as I’d like the I-Thou contact of talking directly with people rather than through a printed page or computer screen. We’ll see!
Find out more about Jerry Dunn and his book ‘My Favorite Place on Earth’: – www.myfavoriteplacenatgeo.com/
