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Terese Loeb Kreuzer is editor-in-chief of the Travel Arts Syndicate
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If you consider a week-long trip to the Caribbean island of Bonaire a reward that might make your 50-hour work week worthwhile, take a moment to consider Terese Loeb Kreuzer's job instead. A resident of Battery Park City, Kreuzer works as a travel writer and the editor-in-chief of a boutique travel arts syndicate, one of only a few of its kind. For her, that same exotic trip helps pay the bills.
But wait. Before the envy sets in, recognize that travel writing isn't about lying on the white sandy beach of a far away island and casually scribbling down notes in between sips of frozen banana daiquiri and dips in the ocean.
"It's not a vacation," Kreuzer says. "People who think that travel writing is not working do not know travel writing."
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| Salt flats on the island of Bonaire. c. 2003 |
Kreuzer does know travel writing, especially the business of travel writing. Her company, Travel Arts Syndicate, is a boutique syndicate specializing in travel writing and travel-related writing on a variety of topics including spas, entertainment, and food. All of the contributors to the Travel Arts Syndicate are experienced travel writers, many of whom have won awards for their work. She started the business in July 2001, a month after leaving a job as a part-time editor of the New York Times Syndicate, which distributes news and feature content to newspapers, magazines, and websites around the globe.
As editor-in-chief of the syndicate, Kreuzer commissions the work, edits the articles, often provides photographs, and also works to get the articles placed in various publications. She works with about 16 writers and photographers from all over the country. This year, their articles have appeared in major newspapers in the United States and Canada, including the Miami Herald, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Toronto Sun, and the Vancouver Sun, among other publications. Through the syndicate, Kreuzer is able to sell each article and photograph freely, avoiding the contractual limitations often placed on freelance writers who agree to provide content exclusively for a specific publication.
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| Terese sits in front of a glacier on the Strait of Magellan in Chile |
In the midst of running the syndicate, Kreuzer keeps her own travel writing skills sharp by taking on plenty of assignments herself. When away on one of the several trips she takes each year, Kreuzer is constantly on the go -- searching for good stories, interviewing people, carefully observing her new surroundings, and furiously jotting down notes, all while also snapping pictures. And when she returns home, more work awaits her. She must then weave all the elements of her research into a marketable narrative, supplemented by quality photographs.
Since becoming a travel writer in 1994, Kreuzer has perhaps lost the ability to take a true vacation. Nowadays, she never goes anywhere without writing about it or toting a camera. Of course, the burden of always carrying her work with her is often coupled with privileged behind-the-scenes access that regular tourists don't get.
She describes travel writing as "a process of discovery to get beyond the surface and beyond the obvious to distill your sense and feeling about the place that somebody else can respond to." For as spiritually elevating as that may sound, Kreuzer is quick to point out that the actual writing process is "so bloody difficult." Even so, it is a lifelong challenge she could not or would not live without. "If I were destitute and living on the streets, I can't imagine not wanting to have something to write with," she says.
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| An elder of the Samburu tribe in Kenya, taken in 2003 |
Despite the toil it sometimes takes to get the story down on paper, Kreuzer draws her readers in through careful attention to detail and colorful presentation. "Who or what could have dreamed up a small island with cacti as tall as trees, thousands of flamingoes, perfectly shaped conical mountains of white salt and four-foot-long iguanas?" she writes of Bonaire. Describing a new concert hall in downtown Los Angeles, she had this to say: "Inside is an intricate but almost monochromatic lobby remarkable for its fascinating interplay of sculptural forms and light. A sinuous staircase slashes through it, carpeted in an abstract floral pattern of orange, green, ocher, and purple designed by Gehry to reflect Lillian Disney's love of flowers."
Kreuzer lives and works out of her two-bedroom apartment in Battery Park City, where she moved in January 2004 after living in Greenwich Village for nearly 15 years. Describing her home-office as cluttered with "red envelopes filled with research material, books and books and books, clips, and magazines," she shunned the proposal of being interviewed there.
Instead, on a rainy day at a café nearby, she displayed pieces she has picked up during her travels. She carried with her a crystal necklace and earrings from Mexico, a silver bracelet from Sedona, a polar fleece from a cruise on the Queen Mary 2, and a hand-woven purse from Portland, Maine. Also in the mix: a yellow umbrella with images from vintage French posters purchased from a vendor in her hometown of Philadelphia, because she dons her travel writer's hat even when returning to the place where she grew up. Her apartment, she says, is filled with bric-a-brac acquired on her trips abroad.
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| Hudson River sunset, Manhattan. c. 2002 |
In between sips of a vanilla latte, Kreuzer talked about a visit the week before to St. Lucia, where she covered a program hosted by a visiting chef from London. The chef demonstrated how to cook local dishes, leading a group of tourists to the pig farm, rum factory, and fruit and vegetable markets he frequents for ingredients when visiting the island. Having returned home -- her own suitcase stocked with nutmeg, cinnamon, and books she picked up -- Kreuzer is now at work putting together an article about her observations.
Kreuzer's career as a travel writer began in 1994 when friends asked her to write a brochure about their Georgian mansion in Stockbridge, Mass. She traveled to Stockbridge to gather information for the brochure and decided when she returned home that she would also write an article about the place. It was later published in Newsday. When the article ran, she received a phone call from the travel editor at the Boston Herald, who wondered if she might be interested in writing about the Cayman Islands. She answered in the affirmative, having been bitten by the travel writing bug.
Over the years, there have been trips to England, Scotland, France, Italy, Poland, Guatemala, China, Bermuda, Mexico, Chile, the United Arab Emirates, and the Caribbean, as well as many places in the United States.
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| A typical Kenyan landscape dominated by an acacia tree |
About 20 years prior to starting the Travel Arts Syndicate, Kreuzer began her own writing, design, editing, and video production company. Called Edgeware Associates, she still runs it today. In each of her business endeavors, Kreuzer has taught herself the skills she needs to succeed.
Rounding out her travel writing and other creative business ventures, Kreuzer also teaches writing privately and works as a freelance reporter for the Battery Park Broadsheet, a community newspaper in her Lower Manhattan neighborhood. In November, she will perform in a production called Writers in Performance, a showcase of the works of writers performing their own texts, at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Kreuzer moved to New York from Philadelphia to pursue a career in acting, but gave it up when she realized she couldn't make a living off of it. This performance will be her first time returning to the stage in 23 years.
Kreuzer's next trip is scheduled for December or January and will take her to Bora Bora. And for as much travel as she's already done, there are still places she hopes one day to visit and write about. Her wish list includes Greece, parts of Italy she hasn't yet been to, some of the Scandinavian countries, and Antarctica.
If you would like to contact Terese Loeb Kreuzer, she can be reached by email at TravelArts1@aol.com.
* Photos courtesy of Terese Loeb Kreuzer. Prints of many of these photos (and others) can be ordered, framed or unframed, in any size up to 18" x 24", by emailing TravelArts1@aol.com.
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