LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL JOURNALISM COMPETITION 
 
 28 Years of Rewarding Journalists for Outstanding Work in the Field 
 
 
 
 
 
 2010 Lowell Thomas Winners 
 
 
 
 Afar Magazine, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle 
 
 Earn 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Honors 
 
 SATW Foundation president David Molyneaux, right, and Foundation administrator Mary Lu Abbott, left, congratulate Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award winners Spud Hilton, Kit Bernardi representing Midwest Living magazine and Laura Del Rosso. 
 
 Afar, a new magazine, and the venerable Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle win top honors as the best travel publications in North America in the 2010 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 Among other winners, Outside magazine wins seven individual awards, Islands magazine, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times four and the New York Times, Afar and National Geographic Traveler three. 
 
 BudgetTravel.com wins gold for the best online travel journalism site. 
 
 Travel Journalist of the Year is Andrew McCarthy, who won the gold for his freelance writing in some of North America’s best travel magazines. 
 
 This is the 26th year of the annual Lowell Thomas competition, overseen by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. The awards, recognized as the most prestigious in the field, were announced in Leipzig, Germany, at the annual convention of the Society of American Travel Writers, the professional organization of travel journalists and communicators. 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Judging was done by faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Foundation awards more than $20,000 in prize money to winners. 
 
 See the full story about this year’s results. 
 
 Individual Award Winners: 
 
 With articles in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appétit, Islands, Afar and other magazines, actor-writer Andrew McCarthy took the top individual honors as 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. 
 
 The Washington Post asked 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year: 
 
 "If you could win only one award in your lifetime, which one would it be: an Emmy, Oscar, Razzie or Lowell Thomas?" 
 
 Andrew McCarthy: 
 
 'I'll take them all.' (Read the entire story...CLICK HERE) 
 
 
 
 
 
 “Word by word, paragraph by paragraph, entry by entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way — by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories,” said the judge. McCarthy’s subjects were wide ranging, from a wilderness trip that turned deadly to a search for the best soda bread recipe in Ireland. 
 
 Silver winner in the Grand Award category is Catharine Hamm, travel editor of the Los Angeles Times, who also takes bronze in investigative reporting. The bronze in Grand Award goes to Gary Stoller, a reporter at USA Today who also wins gold for investigative reporting on airline maintenance failures. 
 
 In Special Packages/Projects, which recognizes in-depth coverage of a topic and emphasizes use of multiple, interactive media, the gold goes to Jill Schensul for “Namibia” in The Record and northjersey.com of Hackensack, N.J. 
 
 Rick Steves earns top honors for the best travel book with “Travel as a Political Act,” in which he shares experiences of more than 30 years exploring the world. Ben Mutzabaugh wins gold for the best travel blog, Today in the Sky, at USAToday.com. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Check out the complete list of winners: 
 
 
 
 What the Judges Said: 
 
 The competition, for work from spring 2009 to spring 2010, drew 1,161 entries. Faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication did judging. 
 
 “The entries were a breath of fresh air,” said Winston Cavin, coordinating judge at the university. “Unfazed by the economy, writers focused on budget-conscious family ideas along with the traditional fare of glitz and faraway places. Travel journalists became twice as productive, twice as clever, and their work as enjoyable as ever." 
 
 Afar, winner of the gold award as best travel magazine, is based in San Francisco and debuted in the summer of 2009. The magazine “presents a stunning mix of standing features (travel with a purpose, unusual places to stay) and stories on truly different topics (bog snorkeling in Wales?) from all over the world,” said the judge. 
 
 And for BudgetTravel.com, the top winner in online travel journalism sites, the judge said: “Amid a wide variety of travel sites, Budget Travel stands out for its quality of information, layout, design and navigation and its community.” 
 
 See the judges’ comments about all winners. 
 
 The Prizes for Winners: 
 
 The total prize money for individual winners this year was $20,600. The Grand Award earns the gold winner $1,500, the silver winner $750 and the bronze place $500. In individual categories, first-place gold winners each receive $500. Silver and bronze winners receive $250 and $150. The categories for Best Newspaper Travel Sections, Best Magazines, Best Online Travel Journalism Sites and Best Travel Packages/Projects are not given monetary awards. 
 
 The 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year receives an engraved crystal award. The other two Grand Award honors and all other gold winners are given engraved plaques, while silver and bronze honorees receive certificates mounted on plaques. 
 
 The awards are named for Lowell Thomas, acclaimed broadcast journalist, prolific author and world explorer during five decades in travel journalism. ||||| Italian author, poet and translator Erri De Luca has added another accolade to his glittering career – although this may be one he would prefer to have avoided. The winner of the 2013 European Prize for Literature, hailed as “writer of the decade” by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2009, has won the 24th annual Literary Review Bad sex award for a passage in his novel The Day Before Happiness. 
 
 Bad sex award 2016: the contenders in quotes Read more 
 
 De Luca’s win was announced at a ceremony at the appropriately named In and Out club in London on Wednesday night. The excerpt that swayed the judges involved the Neapolitan orphan protagonist and a mysterious woman he has watched from afar. 
 
 He writes: “My prick was a plank stuck to her stomach. With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her. She opened her legs, pulled up her dress and, holding my hips over her, pushed my prick against her opening. I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.” 
 
 De Luca was unable to attend and his publisher at Allen Lane accepted the prize on his behalf. 
 
 The book beat stiff competition from a shortlist that included former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis for a passage in her bestselling debut The Butchers’ Hook. It likened sex to hanging out wet washing. Ethan Canin was picked for an episode in A Doubter’s Almanac where pneumatic lovers enjoy sex “like a brisk tennis game or a summer track meet, something performed in daylight between competitors. The cheap mattress bounced.” 
 
 In Men Like Air, Tom Connolly presented the eye-watering revelation that “often she cooked exotic meals and put chillies or spices in her mouth while preparing the food and sucked him while the food cooked and then told him to fuck her while his manhood was burning rock-hard with fire.” Leave Me by Gayle Forman, and The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler were also in contention for this year’s prize. 
 
 Despite the sniggers that greet the annual announcement, the Bad sex award was established in 1993 to raise the tone rather than lower it. The then-editor of the Literary Review, Auberon Waugh, hoped the prize would “draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction”. Since then it has become the one prize literary authors hope to avoid. 
 
 Last year, the singer Morrissey won for a passage in his debut novel List of the Lost, in which the protagonists “sexually violent rotation” was rendered more laughable by the description: “Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.” 
 
 However, De Luca joins an illustrious group of past recipients. As well as Morrissey, bad sex writing by the likes of Melvyn Bragg, Sebastian Faulks, Norman Mailer and Ben Okri has also received the unwelcome accolade. ||||| The nonfiction category was every bit as competitive and featured established authors like the biographer Robert Caro and the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid, who wrote for The Washington Post and The New York Times . 
 
 It was won by Katherine Boo for “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.” In her book, Ms. Boo tells of the heart-rending struggles of the dwellers of a slum in the shadow of luxury hotels in India . 
 
 “If this prize means anything,” she said in her acceptance speech, “it is that small stories in so-called hidden places matter because they implicate and complicate what we consider to be the larger story, which is the story of people who do have political and economic powers.” 
 
 Photo 
 
 Celebrating its 63rd year, the National Book Awards packed some 670 attendees into the elegant Cipriani on Wall Street. The logistics behind the award were particularly challenging this year, as storm surge from Hurricane Sandy flooded the office of the National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, and they have still not been reopened. 
 
 To be eligible for an award, a book must have been written by a United States citizen. Winners received $10,000 and a bronze statue. 
 
 The award for Young People’s Literature went to William Alexander for “Goblin Secrets,” published by Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. 
 
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 “The way things are, are not the only possible way they can be,” Mr. Alexander said. “Stories are the first way we figured that out.” 
 
 David Ferry choked up slightly as he accepted the poetry award for “Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations,” published by the University of Chicago Press. He said he had amazing rivals in his category, and his one advantage was being much older. “My only hope was a preposterous pre-posthumous award,” he said, “and I guess that is what I have won here.” 
 
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 Earlier in the evening, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. , the publisher of The New York Times, was honored for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Mr. Sulzberger was praised for helping to make possible the continuing coverage of books and literature. In her speech introducing Mr. Sulzberger, Terry Gross, the host of the NPR show “Fresh Air,” singled out the Times’s Book Review in particular, saying it was like a “shopping catalog” that alerted her to “authors I’ve overlooked.” 
 
 The award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters went to the prolific and irreverent novelist Elmore Leonard , whose books are peopled with seedy characters, frequently armed with guns. It was only the second time that the award, which has been presented since 1988, went to a writer who was a popular favorite as opposed to a critically acclaimed legend. The first time was when the master of horror, Stephen King , won in 2003. Mr. King was also in the audience Wednesday night to help honor his friend. 
 
 Mr. Leonard, 87, took a humble tone. He compared himself with the English novelist Martin Amis , who introduced him, saying that Mr. Amis was a critically acclaimed writer and that he “was a category on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” 
 
 Still, Mr. Leonard concluded by acknowledging that the award had meaning for him. “I am energized by this honor. The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my life is tell stories, and this award tells me I am still good at it,” he said.
– The year's top travel writer is a familiar face, but more so for acting than writing. Andrew McCarthy of Brat Pack fame (yes, Molly Ringwald's true love in Pretty in Pink) has won the 2010 Lowell Thomas award for Travel Journalist of the Year, notes Jim Romenesko's blog at PoynterOnline. McCarthy's freelance articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appetit, Afar, and the Atlantic, among others. (His piece on Ireland in the latter is here.) "Word by word, paragraph-by-paragraph, entry-by-entry, McCarthy earns the gold the old-fashioned way—by treating readers to excellent writing and poignant stories," declared the judges.