A Q&A with LIC’s globe-trotting journey author and bestselling writer – QNS

Vargas’ bylines have appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vice, Food & Wine and extra, and he or she is an everyday contributor to Tasting Table, overlaying meals, drink and journey. She joined the Travel + Leisure group as an affiliate editorial director in July.

The Colombia native describes her bestselling memoir “Call You When I Land” as “An adventure marked by landings and takeoffs, epiphanies and revelations, beautiful countries and crowded hostels.” In that inspiring and heartfelt e book, she recounts an unbelievable globe-spanning journey – over 10 years within the making – that most individuals by no means get to expertise of their lifetimes.

Told with authenticity and candid reflections, Vargas reveals how these life-changing experiences have formed her life “and morphed me into the woman I am today…and how the simple act of traveling has the power to completely transform us on an almost molecular level, bringing us to new places far from where we started.”

Her journey was sparked by a burning want to seek out her true self, together with a wonderfully timed, freelance journey writing task that led to an impulsive however destiny-filled resolution: a aircraft ticket, first to Cartagena, Colombia, then to Panama and to Argentina’s Iguazú Falls. Imagine all of the sights and sounds of these unique locations – from tasting genuine fare from avenue meals stalls and observing how individuals in several cultures stay and work throughout the globe, to exploring hidden gems in Europe and basking in the fantastic thing about these cascading waterfalls.

It appeared as if the universe took discover and helped pave the way in which, because the 26-year-old wanderess launched into an exciting whirlwind journey that might increase her horizons. She’d meet a brand new love curiosity – or two, and would finally turn into an entrepreneur in 2018, founding Unearth Women, a travel-focused, print journal (now solely accessible as a digital archive of Unearth Women’s previous tales) that championed girls’s tales and spotlighted women-owned companies. But life usually throws sudden curveballs.

During her travels, Vargas would additionally uncover stunning truths about her household.

At its peak, Unearth Women was offered in over 800 bookstores throughout the U.S., Canada and choose bookstores abroad. Her work with that publication has been featured in The New York Times, Good Morning America, CNN, Vogue and extra. You can store its e book, “Wanderess” (Penguin Random House, 2022) on Amazon or wherever books are offered. A female-focused information to touring sensible, protected and solo, Vargas’ first e book options skilled ideas from main girls within the journey trade.

Call You When I Land was named a finest girls’s memoir by Glamour Magazine, a high 50 bestseller by Hudson Books, a workers choose by Apple Books, a e book membership choose by Real Simple, a really helpful learn by Good Morning America and a winner of the 2024 Bessie Award for Impactful Writing.

Vargas tells her readers that the memoir is devoted “to the people still out there searching for themselves. But above all else, this book is for the people in my life: those I met along the way, the broken hearts left in my wake, my family and friends who watched my evolution from afar and everyone who waited for me to call them when I landed.”

QNS caught up with the writer to talk about her world escapades and extra. These days, Vargas works as a full-time journey editor, whereas specializing in writing her third e book, a fiction novel, and internet hosting an offline occasion sequence that she launched known as Femme Circle, which brings girls collectively.

QNS: What fuels your want to discover and share your experiences as a journey author?

Nikki Vargas: It’s necessary to acknowledge that journey is a privilege and a luxurious many are unable to afford. To write about journey is to deliver the skin world into individuals’s properties, giving them home windows into far-flung cultures, traditions, individuals and locations. My love of journey writing weaves collectively a want to deliver the world nearer to readers, to platform the voices of individuals readers would possibly in any other case not have ever recognized about and to attempt to fight a number of the fear-mongering floating round as of late by showcasing the fantastic thing about different locations and cultures.

QNS: Why is touring completely different for girls and what are some challenges and ideas?

NV: It goes with out saying that the expertise of transferring by way of the world as a BIPOC girl is completely different from that of somebody within the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood or somebody who’s, maybe, navigating being a brand new mother and touring with a child. We all deliver completely different experiences, views, considerations and must the desk, and relating to touring and stepping outdoors our consolation zones, it’s necessary that the assets we use (corresponding to journey articles) can converse to these nuances.

I wouldn’t dare attempt to write from a spot of authority on lived experiences I can not personally converse to. This is why, in my first e book, Wanderess, it was a collaborative effort, wherein I introduced in contributing authors who might converse to recommendations on touring as a brand new mother, a girl navigating menopause or as a member of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood attempting to test in at a lodge with their same-sex companion.

My finest tip, then, is to take heed to those that are talking from expertise and might relate to your considerations in a manner that isn’t simply research-based. And, in fact, take a look at Wanderess, the place there are numerous chapters focused on the nuances of vacationers, all delivered by girls who can really converse to them.

QNS: How does your perspective as a feminist affect your tackle journey, numerous cultures and girls’s roles, in addition to your storytelling fashion?

NV: When I used to be on the brink of launch Unearth Women journal, I’d learn a statistic that caught with me: girls make up over 70% of the journey shopper base. This was a wild reality to study as a result of with girls driving journey buying choices, it felt like there was a giant disconnect on the time between the journey content material I used to be seeing and the truth of who the journey base is. Travel is a really private expertise, and for journey media, I feel the extra nuanced and private you will get with journey content material, the higher. To deal with girls as a monolith in a one-note manner in the end does each the reader and the journey media trade a disservice. This caught with me and morphed, over time, into an actual love of uplifting girls’s voices at any time when I might. Many occasions, that’s by way of the tales I inform and who I determine to characteristic in my writing. Lately, it’s by way of my Femme Circle occasions.

QNS: How did your books come about?

NV: Unearth Women mixed my passions for uplifting girls’s voices and telling journey tales. One of the massive content material pillars of the journal was pointing vacationers within the path of women-owned companies in locations across the globe, which we supplied in a sequence known as ‘Feminist City Guides.’ While engaged on Unearth Women, I used to be approached by an editor at Penguin Random House’s Clarkson Potter imprint focused on pursuing a e book impressed by Unearth Women’s work. This concept finally grew to become Wanderess, my collaborative girls’s journey information that shared evergreen recommendations on exploring the world. Once it was completed and about to be launched, I knew I had an concept for a extra private e book that I’d hoped to put in writing. At the time, I used to be an unrepresented writer, so I requested my editor at Clarkson Potter if she might suggest some literary brokers I might join with. The relaxation, as they are saying, is historical past. My literary agent helped me fine-tune my subsequent e book proposal, which in the end grew to become my bestselling journey memoir, Call You When I Land, printed by Harper Collins’ Hanover Square Press imprint in 2023.

QNS: Where have you ever traveled overseas, and when did you get that journey bug?

NV: I’ve traveled to fairly a number of locations overseas, together with Kenya, Morocco, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, France, England, Spain, Iceland, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, all through the Caribbean and Central America, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil—to call a number of. I converse at size about this in my memoir, however I at all times had the journey bug since a younger age. My household grew up putting worth in journey and the data that may very well be gained from exploring completely different cultures.

As far because the U.S., I’m admittedly responsible of not visiting practically sufficient of this nation as I ought to have by now. I grew up in Chicago, so I’ve many of the Midwest coated and, in fact, have explored New York and some states on the East Coast, together with Maine and Florida. I’ve traveled all through the West Coast, to California and Washington State. I’d like to discover locations like New Mexico, South Carolina, Arizona, and spend a while visiting our National Parks.

QNS: How do you stability private storytelling with informative, factual content material?

NV: Travel writing is available in all styles and sizes. There’s service journey writing, the place the primary focus of that article is to point out readers the way to do one thing (corresponding to pack a carry-on effectively, use bank card factors to save lots of on journey or navigate which journey insurance coverage to purchase). There’s destination-based journey writing, rooted in spotlighting locations we really feel, as editors and writers, that readers may not have on their radar however ought to. There’s information and pattern items, the place the purpose of the story is to tell readers of present occasions shaping the journey trade, whether or not it’s new TSA guidelines and laws, airline information, and so on. And then there’s narrative journey writing, which occurs to be my favourite. Good narrative journey writing can strike an excellent stability between making a narrative really feel private to the author, whereas additionally providing factual context of the vacation spot, transporting the reader to a spot they might sooner or later wish to go to.

For me, it’s not a lot a stability because the data that no matter private story I’m sharing in a story piece can not overshadow the vacation spot it takes place in. It’s understanding that there’s a dance between the emotional epiphanies I’m writing about and the vacation spot it happened in, and people each should be spotlighted.

QNS: Where do you keep when touring, and are all of your bills coated as a journey author?

NV: It fully relies on the aim of the journey and whether or not I’m touring for enterprise or leisure. When I’m going on a press journey, for instance, this can be a work journey, the place I’m being invited to a vacation spot on the behest of a tourism board or lodge model focused on internet hosting journalists and editors in change for media protection. These journeys will include outlined journey itineraries meant to showcase the place and properties and, sure, cowl all travel-related bills, in addition to on-the-ground prices. When I journey for leisure, I transfer by way of the world simply as another traveler would, overlaying my very own bills and infrequently trying to disconnect in an exquisite place.

QNS: How do you determine the place to go subsequent?

NV: Where I’m going, whereas ‘on assignment’ is commonly determined by the alternatives that come throughout my desk. If I obtain a press journey invitation to, say, Switzerland to cowl a brand new lodge opening, I’d first make certain it’s of curiosity to my editorial group after which pursue that chance. Where I journey unbiased of my job is fully completely different. That is a call usually rooted in emotion and what I want in that second of time: whether or not it’s a inventive escape, a low-key enjoyable getaway, an journey or a cultural escape that may lend itself to some inspiring discoveries. For instance, not too long ago, I went to Cartagena, Colombia, on a solo journey, with the only real goal of writing my subsequent e book.

QNS: As a journey author, what do you love to do in New York City and Queens? Which eating places do you suggest?

NV: The finest manner to connect with a vacation spot and get a way of a spot is thru its meals. Here in NYC, you perceive through our meals how fantastically numerous New Yorkers are and the way actually world this metropolis is. I’ve a working record of NYC eating places that I simply like to suggest anytime somebody is on the town. Some of those eating places faucet into the worldwide bloodline of this metropolis and its cultural combine, others faucet into nostalgia for previous New York. There are just too many eating places to record, however a few of my favorites embody: The Waverly Inn (Manhattan), the place you’re feeling as if you’ve stepped again in time to a different period, fully; Raf’s and Cafe Zaffri (Manhattan), owned by the identical group and delivering implausible meals; District Saigon in Astoria, the place I’ve but to discover a pho on this metropolis that may high theirs; Takumen in LIC, the place their Ban Ban ramen is solely the perfect for a cold day.

QNS: Share your Queens story with our readers.

NV: I’ve been dwelling in Queens now for practically a decade. I lived in Astoria with my now-husband for about eight years earlier than transferring to LIC, the place we presently stay. My husband, comic and filmmaker Jeff Cerulli, is the one who in the end introduced me to Queens. Before him, it’s no exaggeration to say that I solely got here right here in my early NYC days, to fly out of LaGuardia or JFK. Today, I’m proud to stay in such a fantastically numerous borough, with such an excellent array of genuine cuisines and locally-owned companies imbued with a way of place and tradition.

When dwelling in Astoria, I used to be working as a journey editor for a publication, the place I had my very own video sequence that explored varied cultures by way of their delicacies. Local spots, like Thai restaurant Pochana, or Vietnamese restaurant District Saigon, grew to become locations I featured on this sequence, showcasing the immigrant tales that introduced these locations to life.