publications
Primordial Love
An essay about one of the sweetest sensations in life, departing Paris during the pandemic, and how memory and love are linked.
Illustrations by Camille Valasquez
Our Ravaged Lady
Notre Dame de Paris - and a life - catch fire.
Society of American Travel Writers Foundation Lowell Thomas Award - Essay Silver
Grand Prize Gold Solas Award for Travel Story of the Year, 2020
The Best Women’s Travel Writing, vol. 12
Travelers’ Tales Editor’s Choice, April 2020
Hidden Compass, Spring 2020 edition (Revised version)
A Jagged Edge in Fez
A violent memory unspools in the labyrinthine byways of Fez, Morocco.
Deep Travel Anthology: Souvenirs from the Inner Journey, August 2019
Bronze Solas Award - Travel and Transformation, 2016
The Stance of the Toro Bravo
A bullfight in Plaza de Toros de las Ventas, Madrid offers a path to healing.
The Pilgrimage Chronicles, Sacred World Explorations, 2017
Gold Solas Award - Travel and Healing, 2014
The Ancient Storyteller of Morocco
Ahmed Ezzarghani, traditional Hakawati (storyteller) of Marrakech, Morocco, transcends language, time, and distance.
Panache, Paris, June 2018
Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco - Afterword
Excerpted in The Creative Process Exhibition in Fez, Morocco, 2019
Gold Solas Award - Most Unforgettable Character, 2017
Spirals: Memoir of a Celtic Soul
Mystical experience and memory swirl together in Ireland.
The Soul of a Great Traveler, Travelers’ Tales Solas House, 2017
The Best Travel Writing, vol 9 Travelers’ Tales Solas House, 2012
Travelers’ Tales Editor’s Choice, March 2012
Silver Solas Award for Travel Story of the Year, 2012
Press 53 Open Awards Finalist, 2011
“Into Celtic Twilight”
A return to Ireland brings a spiritual experience that leads to a homecoming in California.
Awards: Gold Solas Award - Travel and Healing, 2017
Reconnaissance: Seeking Sainte-Geneviève
Geneviève, a fifth century French heroine, becomes a guide through current difficult times.
Wings
The Best Women’s Travel Writing, vol. 11, Travelers’ Tales Solas House, 2017
Out Into Paris
The terrorists attacks of November, 2015 evoke the past, present, and future of Paris.
Wings
Gold Solas Award - Bad Trip, 2017
In Vincent’s Footsteps
An effort to walk in van Gogh’s shoes becomes disastrously real.
Wings
The Best Travel Writing, vol. 11, Travelers’ Tales Solas House, 2017
Gold Solas Award - Bad Trip, 2016
Cézanne’s Salon des Refusés
Paul Cézanne’s heartaches and isolation give his art astonishing clarity.
Wings
Excerpted in The Creative Process Exhibition, University of Leuven, Flanders, Belgium, The European Conference for the Humanities; American University of Paris; 800th anniversary of Salamanca University, Spain.
Silver Solas Award - Culture and Ideas, 2016
Bastille Day on the Palouse
A trip across the Washington state Palouse offers a cure for reverse culture-shock.
Wings
Tales to Go, Travelers’ Tales online publication, 2016
Fez Rushed In
An overwhelming arrival in Fez, Morocco leads to a slow integration of this kaleidoscopic place.
Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco, Reputation Books 2016 (story retitled “Introduction - Kaleidoscoped”)
New Millennium Writings Nonfiction Award, Honorable Mention, 2013
Deep Travel, Notre Dame
The mysterious psyche of Notre Dame cathedral issues a challenge to examine religion.
Wings
Grand Prize Bronze Solas Award for Travel Story of the Year, 2015
New York State of Mind
The skyline of New York invites visions of the skies of Egypt, Peru, Italy and elsewhere.
Gold Solas Award - Destination, 2015
Duende in the Louvre
Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s concept of duende, the dark thread that runs through our lives, is presented in bone-chilling reality in Musée du Louvre.
Wings
Silver Solas Award - Women’s Travel, 2015
À Propos de Paris
French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson presents a guided tour of Paris through his eyes.
Wings
Silver Solas Award - Most Unforgettable Character, 2015
Ave Métro
A man playing the oboe in the Paris metro evokes Santana’s album Abraxas.
Wings
Excerpt featured on Nancy Davis Kho’s award-winning site, Midlife Mixtape
Panache Paris, March 2017
Silver Solas Award - Travel and Healing, 2015
Déjeuner, Normandie
Poem. Savor the perfect day in Normandie, France.
A Taste of Poetry, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, 2015
The Healing Heights of Machu Picchu
Pablo Neruda’s poem about Machu Picchu offers insight and courage on a trip to Peru.
Adventures of a Lifetime, World Traveler Press, 2015
Silver Solas Award - Travel and Healing, 2012
Tom Howard Short Story Most Highly Commended Award 2012
Day Dreamer
Two teen boys discover something inside a painting in Musee d’Orsay in Paris that proves that the artist achieved his most audacious goal.
Wings
The Best Women’s Travel Writing volume 10
Points North Atlanta magazine, November, 2013 issue
New Millennium Writings Nonfiction Award Honorable Mention 2013
Silver Solas Award - Family Travel, 2013
Signs
After a crisis, every wish made during a day in Paris comes true.
Wings
Bronze Solas Award - Destination 2014
Café de Nuit
Poem. Come inside Vincent van Gogh’s Night Café for a romantic interlude.
Burning the Midnight Oil, anthology edited by Phil Cousineau, 2013
Coltrane Twilight
Poem. An ode to John Coltrane’s song, Central Park West.
Burning the Midnight Oil, anthology edited by Phil Cousineau, 2013
The Live Current of the Story: Q and A with Writer Erin Byrne
As I write, I feel the live current of the story pulsing through me as if I’m a conduit - and I myself am lit up.
W3 Sidecar, 2013
When We Fell in Love (With Reading and Writing)
For me, reading and writing have always been inextricable from travel.
Three Guys One Book, 2013
Author Q and A: Erin Byrne on Travel Writing
All good travel writing, I believe, moves people twice: transports them to a place and shifts them emotionally.
Write On Online, 2013
How to Become a Travel Writer - Writer’s Digest Guest Column
You are the matador. The sun sparkles on your ‘traje de luces’ (suit of lights) as you clutch your scarlet capote. Trumpets blast as the bull that is your story enters the ring. It is at this point that many people drop their true sentences and flee, because as soon as we attempt to pinpoint a focus or impose structure upon the story, it lowers its head and charges. Truth is powerful; its brightness brings on the beast.
Writer’s Digest, 2013
Reading and Writing Morocco
A House in Fez by Suzanna Clarke takes us into the daily life of vivid, dynamic Fez. The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles goes straight into the most essential challenge of travel.
Shelf Pleasure, 2013
Storykeepers
A seven-year-old in Occupied Paris witnesses the crash of a USAF B-17G in his neighborhood and spends years piecing together the stories of the men on the plane and offering healing to survivors.
Wings
The Best Travel Writing, volume 10
Editor’s Choice Travelers’ Tales April 2013
Grand Prize Bronze Solas Award for Travel Story of the Year, 2013
Tom Howard/John J. Reed Short Story Award, Winning Writers, Second Prize 2013
The Boy and His Shield
René Psarolis was happily wrapped in his own insulated world. He was seven years old in the summer of 1944, busy trailing behind his big brother Henri and his pals, walking hand-in-hand with his Papa, and blooming under the nourishing care of his Maman, who cleared a path for light in the darkness of the German occupation.
Wild Horses Women on Fire Collection, elj Publications, March 2015
Wings
The Creative Process Exhibition at ECHIC, European Conference for the Humanities, Athens, Greece.
French Connections
Feel the sizzling synapsis of connection inside a Parisian café.
Wings - sketch by Anna Elkins from Wings
Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, American Association of Pen Women, First place, memoir vignette, 2013
New Millennium Writings Nonfiction Award Honorable Mention, 2013
Frank Sinatra in the Early Evening
Poem. Flirting with Frank Sinatra while making dinner in the kitchen.
New Millennium Writings Literary Journal, issue 22
New Millennium Writings Poetry Award Honorable Mention
Dear Madame Renaud
A woman in Normandy who tended the graves of fallen American soldiers after D-Day offers deep healing from grief decades later.
Wings
Wild Horses Women on Fire Collection, elj Publications, March 2015
Bronze Solas Award - Doing Good or The Kindness of Strangers, 2012
Tom Howard Short Story Most Highly Commended Award, 2012
Red Petals
Short fiction story. After the Liberation of Paris, a model wearing Christian Dior’s New Look is attacked by market women in Montmartre.
VESTOJ: A Journal of Sartorial Matters, Summer 2012 issue, Fashion and Shame
Vincent’s Vision: The First of Further Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Perhaps there exists a parallel universe in which Vincent walked up the hill in Auvers-sur-Ouise that summer day in 1890, reached the fields, pulled a gun out of his pocket - and hesitated. This story belongs in that dimension.
Wings
Crab Creek Review Literary Journal 2011, vol.2
The Taste of This Place
A bite of baguette evokes past eras of Paris.
Wings
Gold Solas Award - Travel and Food, 2011
The Secret of It
The secrets Parisiennes whispered to me about aging.
Wings
Wild Horses Women on Fire Collection, elj Publications, March 2015
Bronze Solas Award - Travel and Transformation, 2011
Winged Victory: A Pilgrimage to Paris
I clicked along in my Franco Sarto boots, a worldly woman, chic, savvy, but when I saw her posed at the top of the Daru staircase, I stopped and stared. Winged Victory had something I lacked.
Wings
The Best Travel Writing, 2011
World Hum (“Victory at the Louvre”)
Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference Benefactor’s Award First Place Essay
Gold Solas Award - Travel and Transformation, 2010
Editors’ Choice Travelers’ Tales October 2010
The Rarest of Editions
If books are humanity in print, he’s the king of the world. An homage to George Whitman, former proprietor of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, Paris.
Wings
Vignettes & Postcards anthology, edited by Erin Byrne, Reputation Books 2016
Gold Solas Award -Culture and Ideas, 2010
Vignettes & Postcards
Writers from all around the world come from the many areas of Paris - on foot, on bicycles, on the metro - to gather in George Whitman’s private library to create something tangible out of the richness of their lives.
Wings
Vignettes & Postcards from Paris
Sketch by Candace Rose Rardon from Vignettes & Postcards from Paris
Escape
Prose poem based on Henri Cartier Bresson’s photo, Porte d’Aubervilliers
Vignettes & Postcards from Paris
Placed in the Place
During a crisis, the people who were placed in the place that I love turned out to be what I loved about the place.
Grand Prize, Book Passage Travel Writers’ and Photographers’ Conference, 2009
Leaning Back Into My Sister’s Spirit
Pikes Peak, Colorado cushions painful memories and grief.
Bronze Solas Award - Family Travel, 2009
Coasting Beyond Boyhood
Pointe du Hoc, a plain high above the Normandy beaches, moves two teen-aged boys beyond boyhood.
Wings
A Rare Blend
A bunch of people travel to the Medoc region of France and mingle together to produce a rare blend.
Writer’s Workshop Review Literary Journal, July, 2008
Peace Matters
Nobel Prize Series 2 - The Nobel Peace Prize in light of David Elliot Cohen’s book, What Matters.
Eight reasons why Barack Obama Earned the Nobel Prize
Eight Nobel Prize Laureates on How Leadership Can End War
Nobel Prize Series 1
Laureates from around the world remind us that peace is not an antiquated notion, but a real possibility that requires certain qualities in our leaders.
Lessons Abroad
It was an unlikely place for thoughts of American patriotism: A twisting and turning narrow road under a green canopy in the hills of Ireland.
Goodbye to Bush: Europeans React to President Bush’s Farewell Tour
Europe says goodbye to President Bush, opening a window of opportunity for travelers. Discover what this window hinges on.
Culturedash
Indulge the desire to travel far away from the familiar.
Seine Through Fresh Eyes
The Fortress of His Mind: Charles d’Orleans’ Captivity in The Tower of London