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Rolf Potts
Rolf Potts talks about his book Marco Polo Didn't Go There
Rolf Potts talks about his book Marco Polo Didn't Go There
Born (1970-10-13) October 13, 1970 (age 54)
Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
OccupationWriter, journalist
EducationWichita North High School
George Fox University
Bennington College (MFA)
GenreTravel writing
SpouseKristen Bush

Rolf Potts (born October 13, 1970) is an American travel writer, essayist, podcaster, and author. He has written five books, including Vagabonding (Random House, 2003), Marco Polo Didn't Go There (Travelers Tales, 2008), Souvenir (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Vagabond's Way (Ballantine, 2022). The lifestyle philosophies he outlined in Vagabonding are considered to have been a key influence on the digital nomad movement.[1][2]

Career

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Online journalism

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The son of schoolteachers from Wichita, Kansas,[3] Potts' earliest vagabonding journeys included hopping freight trains across the Pacific Northwest,[4][5] and taking an eight-month "van life before #VanLife" Volkswagen Vanagon journey around North America in the early 1990s.[3][6] He later taught English in Busan, South Korea before embarking on a pioneering multi-year digital nomad journey,[2] writing from-the-road travel dispatches for such dialup-era online outlets as salonmagazine.com (which later became Salon.com).[3]

In 1999, while traveling in Thailand, Potts attempted to infiltrate the film-set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie called The Beach.[7] His essay about the experience, "Storming 'The Beach'," was chosen by Bill Bryson for inclusion in The American Travel Writing 2000.[3] Poets & Writers later noted that, "the story, far from being an account of a simple-minded stunt, was actually a fantastic narrative mixed with meditations on the 'shadowlike ironies of travel culture,' Walker Percy's 'traveler's angst,' and 'the greater struggle for individuality in the information age.'"[3] In 2022, more than two decades after "Storming 'The Beach'" went viral, Uproxx noted that it "ushered in a new era of young, web-first...travel writing that influenced a generation."[8]

Potts' travel writing has appeared in venues such as Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Slate, and The Atlantic.[9] In 2010, he wrote and field-produced an online video series about a six-week journey that took him around the world with no luggage or bags of any kind.[10][11] In addition to writing about travel, Potts has also written about U.S. military reading lists for The New Yorker,[12] Islamist Sayyid Qutb's travel memoirs for The Believer,[13] mockbuster B-movies for the New York Times Magazine,[14] Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" for The Nation,[15] and the murder of small-college football player Brandon Brown for Sports Illustrated.[16]

Books

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Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, Potts' first book, mixes practical advice with philosophical insights about the value of travel. Upon its release in 2003, the Boston Globe called it "a valuable contribution to our thinking, not only about travel, but about life and work."[17] USA Today dubbed the author "Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age"[18] (Potts has downplayed the comparison[19]). The book has been through more than 30 printings, and has been widely translated worldwide.[9]

Potts' second travel book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer, debuted in 2008. The book won a Lowell Thomas Award in the United States, and in 2009 became the first American-authored book to win Italy's Bruce Chatwin Prize for international travel writing.[20] In 2016 Potts released a short book about the psychogeography of the Geto Boys' eponymous, Rick Rubin-produced third album for the 33⅓ series of music criticism, and in 2018 he wrote Souvenir for Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series of books about "the hidden lives of ordinary things." The Boston Globe called Souvenir "a treasure trove of … fascinating deep dives into the history of travel keepsakes."[21]

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Potts was featured in several episodes of the 2007 National Geographic Adventure documentary Odyssey: Driving Around the World,[22] and appeared as a commentator in the 2013 documentary film Gringo Trails, which explored the impact of tourism on travel destinations and host communities worldwide.[23]

In "Burn Rate," a 2022 episode in the sixth season of Showtime's Billions, Rian (Eva Victor) brandishes a copy of Vagabonding while "visualizing" a long-term journey in her office ("Rolf shows us how," she tells a coworker).[24] In "Axe Global," the penultimate season 7 episode of Billions, Rian leaves a copy of Vagabonding in the office of her boss Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) before leaving on an open-ended journey to Morocco and North Africa.[25]

Guest lecturing

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Potts was the 2011-2012 ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House.[26] He more recently taught nonfiction writing at Yale University,[27] and he directs annual summer writing workshops in Paris.[28]

Personal life

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When not traveling, Potts lives in a small farmhouse on 30 acres of land in rural north-central Kansas. He is married to actress Kristen Bush.[9]

References

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  1. ^ "Vagabonding author Rolf Potts and the digital nomad lifestyle". Creative Life.
  2. ^ a b Andrea, Sachs (11 December 2020). "With travel podcasts, explore the world through your ear buds". Washington Post.
  3. ^ a b c d e Bures, Frank (November–December 2008). "The World Over: A Profile of Rolf Potts". Poets & Writers.
  4. ^ "Rolf Potts on Long-Term Travel". Transitions Abroad.
  5. ^ "Jumping freight trains in the Pacific NW". Deviate Podcast.
  6. ^ "Van Life before #VanLife". Deviate Podcast.
  7. ^ Potts, Rolf (30 January 1999). "Storming "The Beach"". Salon.com.
  8. ^ Bramucci, Steve (7 December 2022). "The Vagabond's Way — 366 Meditations On Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel". Uproxx.
  9. ^ a b c "Bio". Official site.
  10. ^ "About". No Baggage Challenge.
  11. ^ Mayerowitz, Scott (19 August 2010). "Man Circles the Globe Without Luggage". ABC News.
  12. ^ Potts, Rolf (2 May 2011). "Canon Fodder". The New Yorker.
  13. ^ Potts, Rolf (October 2006). "The Tourist Who Influenced the Terrorists". The Believer.
  14. ^ Potts, Rolf (7 October 2007). "The New B Movie". The New York Times Magazine.
  15. ^ Potts, Rolf (14 November 2006). "The Last Anti-War Poem". The Nation.
  16. ^ Potts, Rolf (4 December 2012). "Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town, raises questions". Sports Illustrated.
  17. ^ Morgan, Stephen (2 February 2003). "Advice for the vagabond in all of us". Boston Globe.
  18. ^ "For Rolf Potts, every day is a winding road". USA Today. 10 January 2003.
  19. ^ Potts, Rolf (5 September 2007). "We Don't (Really) Know Jack". World Hum.
  20. ^ "Marco Polo Didn't Go There Wins 2 Awards". Travelers Tales. Archived from the original on 2013-02-04.
  21. ^ Daniel, Diane (12 June 2018). "Spoons, magnets, rocks: New Book looks at the history of souvenirs". Boston Globe.
  22. ^ "Rolf Potts". Internet Movie Database.
  23. ^ Cynthia, Fuchs (5 September 2014). "'Gringo Trails' Explores the Complicated Business of Tourism". PopMatters.
  24. ^ "Billions, Season 6, Episode 4 - Burn Rate (full transcript)". Subtitles-like Scripts.
  25. ^ "Billions Recap: Minted". Vulture. 20 September 2023.
  26. ^ "Department of English: Rolf Potts". University of Pennsylvania.
  27. ^ "Rolf Potts, Lecturer in English". Yale University Department of English.
  28. ^ "Instructors". Paris Writing Workshops.
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