Written by Bradt Travel Guides
Hilary Bradt on a beastly journey with Peggy
Bradt Travel Guides is on the hunt for entertaining true stories to publish in a new anthology about travelling with animals. Beastly Journeys will feature accounts of everything from hilarious holidays with pets to journeys on which wild animals somehow came along for the ride (whether their presence was welcome or not).
Beastly Journeys will complete a loose trilogy of themed travel-writing anthologies. To Oldly Go came out in October 2015, and went on to become one of the bestselling travel-writing titles of the year. Roam Alone has just been published (April 2017) to great acclaim.
To set the tone, the book will include a few extracts from writers famous for focusing on travelling with animals – perhaps Mark Shand (Travels on my Elephant), John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels with a Donkey…).
However, most will be new stories selected from those submitted by you! Tales must be 1,000–2,000 words in length, and focus upon a journey with an animal (not just a wildlife encounter). We expect to get a good selection of stories about travel with dogs and horses/donkeys, so are particularly looking for journeys featuring unusual animals or in which the presence of an animal companion was unexpected or uninvited. The animal itself can be domestic or wild, loveable or threatening, curious or stubborn, just as long as it is an important character in the story. Please note that we are not looking for accounts of wildlife-spotting, however thrilling. Your story must include sustained, colourful and personal ‘engagement’ with an animal.
The usual conventions of good travel writing need to be observed: develop a sense of place (remember, this is a travel book) and create an exciting or touching story within the parameters of your word count.
If you’d like a better sense of what we’re after, take a look at our previous anthologies in this series – Roam Alone: Inspiring Tales by Reluctant Solo Travellers and To Oldly Go: Tales of Intrepid Travel by the Over-60s.
Entry details
Length: Stories should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words long, and written in the first person.
Deadline: The deadline for submission of your tale is midnight on 31st October 2017 (although entries will be reviewed and selected as they come in, so try not to leave it to the last minute).
To enter: Email your travel tale (as an attached Word document) to Competitions@bradtguides.com with ‘Beastly Journeys competition’ in the subject field. Please include your name, email address and a daytime telephone number in the body of your email (NOT in the Word document itself).
Marketing: Entrants’ email addresses will be subscribed to our twice monthly newsletter. If you do not wish to be added to this mailing list please include the phrase NO NEWSLETTER in the body of your email entry.
Selection: Entries will be judged anonymously. We aim to compile a shortlist by November, and complete the final selection by the end of the year (by which time we should have notified all entrants, whether successful or not). Winning entrants will receive a small fee and two copies of the book in which their tale is published.
Terms & Conditions: Full Terms & Conditions of entry are available here.