The Hairpin Travel Series

Hello! I’m excited to announce (and encourage you to buy!) the travel anthology “An Experience Definitely Worth Allegedly Having: Travel Stories From The Hairpin.” It’s a Kindle Serial featuring eight longform, never-before-published non-fiction stories from eight frequent Hairpin/Awl-world contributors: Carrie Frye, Jim Behrle, Maria Bustillos, Anne Helen Petersen, Chiara Atik, Nicole Cliffe, Jenna Wortham, and me. Each story takes about 10 minutes or so to read, and the whole thing costs $1.99. From the Amazon description:

Like The Hairpin, these essays are funny, weird, adventurous, and moving. There are stories about following a mysterious stranger’s maps in Mexico, attending endless step aerobics classes in Buenos Aires, faking a terrible British accent in London, and navigating a nude spa in Stockholm. About loneliness, connection, and sunburn.

You don’t need a Kindle to read it, but you do need a computer, smartphone, or tablet with the (free) Kindle app — although I imagine there are sneaky ways to get around this, except hopefully the sneaky ways also involve spending $1.99, because a percentage of that goes to each of the writers, and their stories are so good.

If you’d like to get it now (and I’ll be shamelessly posting teasers every other week or so for the next couple months), you’ll get the introduction and the first, excellent installment, by Carrie Frye, and then two weeks later, you’ll automatically get the next, excellent installment, by Maria Bustillos. And so on, with a new episode appearing on your e-reader every other week, unless you destroy your e-reader, perhaps, but even that isn’t a guarantee that you will be safe against this Series. As the esteemed Maud Newton recently tweeted, although not completely in context: “How could anyone be disappointed with this WEALTH OF RICHES for $1.99?!” Truly.

Plus Hairpin pal and overall cool person Thyra Heder painted that beautiful globe on the cover, and there’s more of her work for the series on the companion Tumblr. That’s right (thank you, infomercials), there’s also a COMPANION TUMBLR that’s completely free and will be updated with additional media (photos, videos, who knows) for each episode. For instance, here’s Carrie’s. You can almost see the fleas.

I hope you enjoy!