Interview with Beebe Bahrami, Author and Anthropologist Writer

Beebe Bahrami interviewBeebe Bahrami has been a frequent contributor to my Perceptive Travel online magazine and is the author of multiple books. She has also lectured, published freelance articles, and won several major writing awards. We caught up to talk about her history and advice on writing travel books and narratives.

As your name might suggest, you have an interesting ancestral background and history. Where did you grow up, live, and settle down?

I am a Colorado native. I was born, grew up, and educated through my undergraduate college degree in Colorado. Though I am now based in coastal southern New Jersey, I still return to Colorado often and still feel my roots are there. My name preserves my Iranian, Armenian, and Georgian ancestral roots and I come from a diverse and global family where music, poetry, and storytelling were and remain a constant daily presence.

I earned a degree in molecular biology from the University of Colorado but during my last semester there I won a scholarship that allowed me to study abroad in Seville, Spain. It was a pivotal time and when I returned home, I shifted gears to anthropology and went to Philadelphia for doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in the languages, cultures, archaeology, histories, and folklore of the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds of France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. I have since settled down in a somewhat nomadic manner, regularly going back and forth between Colorado, New Jersey, southwestern France, and northern Spain. The latter two geographies are the ones about which I write most.

You’ve studied anthropology and have become perhaps the foremost expert on the Camino de Santiago walking route. How have those areas of expertise impacted your writing career?

Both have had a profound impact. Anthropology gave me deep immersive training in cultures, languages, history, archaeology, and folklore, as well as in how to do thorough research and write about people and place. It also exposed me to the whole history of travel literature, from the first written accounts to modern attempts to understand and communicate about human experiences around the globe.

Anthropology also taught me to focus and specialize and led me to my lifetime devotion to southwestern France and northern Spain, a rich and vast territory with incredible time depth and interconnected influences, including the dense interweaving of pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. This all endlessly feeds and constantly stimulates my writing work.

Beebe Bahrami Camino

What are some of the misconceptions people have about the Camino de Santiago and what do many travelers do wrong when trying to experience it?

The biggest snafu may be overplanning and over-conceptualizing the Camino.

There is a lot of advice out there for how to walk it, both physically and philosophically, but first and foremost, it is an ancient pilgrimage trek that partakes of both “trek” and “pilgrimage,” which means it is going to be something entirely different from hiking the Appalachian Trail or taking a plane, train, and bus to Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, or Lourdes (for example). Perhaps most overlooked is that there is an alchemy on the ancient pilgrim walk that assures that it will transform a person, during, at, and after the arrival to the holy goal of Santiago de Compostela.

I think the best thing people can do is suspend expectations and judgements and dive in, but first being sure to have really well-fitting shoes and packs and trusting that they don’t need to bring too much, that the Camino has everything on it a person will need, and then keeping an open mind, heart, and itinerary as they go.

All the best laid plans are undone by the Camino—this is a guarantee, so one might as well show up with loose plans and a sense of adventure.

You've written quite a few books over the years, including a guidebook that's going into its second edition. What is your process like for a big project like that?

It is utterly overwhelming and chaotic at first, and that is a part of its appeal and beauty: I dive in to all the moving parts that are required to compose a book and let it be overwhelming and chaotic as I look for its structure, determine its essential content, and do tons of research, interviewing, note taking, and exploring. It always has a guiding concept and then book proposal and outline, but this is fluid as the boots-on-the-ground research and post-trip writing and research take place.

Using that outline, I walk, talk, and explore and take copious notes and also take thousands of photos, both to illustrate the book as well as to serve as visual notes of details I may need to write about later.

Books on the Camino de Santiago

Back at my desk, I organize all those notes and photos into chapters. I also still use paper index cards to organize all the minutia and move the information around to order it as I write. I watch and listen for the natural order and structure to emerge, even if it defies the original outline, and follow its guidance. I let the material and my findings direct the shape of the book. Once I have a first draft, it gives me a chance to see what is missing, and fill it in. Then I then go through the process of polishing, fact checking, and updating (guidebooks are notorious for information changing overnight so I am often updating repeatedly).

I work with wonderful publishers and we have a rich back and forth process during the editing phase. When it is all done, I celebrate. Months later, when the book is released, I hold the book in my hands and celebrate again. It is a form of giving birth, but to a fully formed and independent being.

On your portfolio page you allude to the non-glamorous aspects of being a traditional travel writer and the difficulty of making the numbers add up financially sometimes. What has worked best for you over the years in that respect?

Specializing—being known as an expert—has served me well and given me opportunities to be on projects that seek out writers with deep levels of knowledge, experience, and commitment to specific geographies, cultures, and topics. This includes writing comprehensive guidebooks that are as layered in practical travel information as historical, cultural, culinary, ecological, and sacred knowledge.

Diversifying the income side also has helped a lot. I put most of my effort into writing books and narrative travel essays, but I also keep my eye open for other areas that can complement and augment my work, including being a book doctor/consultant, writing book reviews, teaching writing retreats, being a tour expert, and giving talks. As important has been the choice to live simply, which suits a writing life well.

I think the first article you wrote for my Perceptive Travel online magazine more than a decade ago won a Gold Solas Award and you've won others since. What are the secrets of creating a compelling narrative travel story?

guidebook author interview with Beebe BahramiI think the top keys to creating a compelling narrative story are tapping into the universal experience of the journey and taking the readers into it so viscerally that they feel as if it is really their experience.

For the first aspect, this is achieved by discerning what the relatable take-away, lesson, or point of the story is and honoring that in all the details brought into the story and how it is told, forming the story’s structure, action arc, and outcome.

For the second aspect, it goes back to the oft-cited rule of good writing, to really show not tell. This is wonderfully achieved by bringing in the immediate, sensory details of being in a place and witnessing the scene first hand: Show what you saw, heard, smelled, ate, felt and make sure it all feeds the story’s central arc and message. This is a beautiful way to step out of the way of the reader and let them occupy your skin and experience and tap into the universal aspect of the human experience you are conveying.

I also like opening a piece by dropping the reader right into the heat of action or the peak of an experience, like the opening close-lensing of a movie. This invests them in the story, and then you can pull back and give more context and let the story unfold.

 

Writer and anthropologist Beebe Bahrami is the author several travel books, including three travel memoirs, two set in France (Café Oc and Café Neandertal), and one set on the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain (The Way of the Wild Goose), and several travel guides including Moon Camino de Santiago and The Spiritual Traveler Spain. In addition to Perceptive Travel, her essays and articles appear in BBC Travel, Wine Enthusiast, Archaeology, The Bark, and The Pennsylvania Gazette, among other publications..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.