Travel Talk is a new Sosauce blog series in which we chat with our favorite travel experts about celebrating the saucy side of travel. With such successful experiences in travel media, we want to highlight their journeys from turning a passion for wanderlust into a profession, their travel plans for the new year, and how they document and share their own travel experiences.

You can read our previous Travel Talk traveler spotlights here.

This week we interviewed Julie Schwietert Collazo, Managing Editor at Matador Network and partner at Collazo Projects. Julie is a travel writer extraordinaire, a humanitarian, and inspiring woman we have the privilege to call not only a Travel Geek, but a friend. Read  Travel Talk with Julie below to learn how she’s using writing to do good in this world.

Julie Schwietert Collazo – Travel Mom & Established Writer

You’re a writer through and through. What launched your writing career and how did it expand into travel and social awareness?
I’ve always been a writer; I just took a circuitous route to return to writing full-time. During my senior year in college, my thesis was about the effects of art therapy on women with cancer. I was intrigued- if the kinds of benefits I was witnessing worked as the result of visual arts, I expected the same could happen with writing. I searched for an internship in the creative arts therapies, moved to New York for that internship (which was at a pretty radical social service agency, Housing Works), was offered a full-time job, got my Masters of Social Work degree at NYU, and became a registered creative arts therapist specializing in the use of writing. I was really helping other people learn to use writing as an instrument for self-awareness and healing. I then moved to another social service agency and helped establish their writing therapy program and became the assistant director of the agency at the tender age of 25. Then I quit without any plan for what was next; bureaucracy had burned me out.

I worked as an educational tour director with EF Smithsonian for a couple years, mostly in Puerto Rico, where I ended up living from 2005 until the end of 2007. And in the off-season I started writing full-time again. When people hear my “resume,” they often wonder how it all ties together. But I actually think all of my experiences informed each other and aren’t at odds with one another at all. What’s always been present in all of my work is a love of people, writing, travel, and individual and social evolution. It’s just been channeled in different ways. Now, it’s all come together in a single career. I feel pretty grateful for that.

When did you and your husband, Francisco set up Collazo Projects? What are some of the other hobbies you share?
Collazo Projects is the bilingual blog I run with my husband, Francisco. We jokingly call ourselves professional dilettantes, and the blog reflects our diverse interests: food, politics, art, culture, social movements, and particularly as all of these relate to Latin America. As for our “projects,” in addition to writing, photographing, and shooting video, Francisco is a private chef and we occasionally do research and translation work (English-Spanish and vice versa) for documentaries and art exhibits. It’s a fun mix of activities that allows us to tap into all of our talents and interests.

Julie and Francisco

How did you get involved with Matador Travel? What is your role with Matador now?
I discovered Matador via Craigslist back in 2006, which is the year Matador launched. I started writing articles regularly and eventually was brought on board as an editor. I’m currently the managing editor of the whole network, as well as the lead editor on two of our 12 blogs, Change and Pulse. There are lots of other projects I work on for Matador as well. The big one at the moment is our travel media school, MatadorU, which is going to be launching a photography course in March. Another project is organizing our response to the earthquake in Haiti.

Read our review of Matador’s continued excellence in not only the travel industry, but global awareness in this previous article on the Sosauce blog.

You are more than just a travel writer. You are also heavily involved with volunteer programs, community development, and cultural enrichment. How do you balance all of your passions, especially being a new mom?
I’m flattered that anyone thinks I balance all my passions and projects! The real credit goes to Francisco, who handles all the aspects of domestic life–cooking, laundry, cleaning, errands–and totally frees me up to work on all these other projects (which, by the way, he’s a full partner in). The fact that he works from home too means that we have completely flexible schedules, so we’re able to support one another all day, every day. We’ve always been 100% committed to supporting one another’s projects and dreams, no matter how “out there” they might be, and I think our genuine desire to see and help one another grow is a huge source of energy for both of us. As for parenthood, the big secret there is that we don’t sleep. Kidding. Sort of. Seriously, the real secret is that we don’t view any area of our lives as separate from another. So there’s not really work and then home and then parenting–it’s all just life.

Baby Mariel and mom, Julie

What projects are you currently busy working on?
A recently finished project was a big writing assignment for Fodor’s, contributing to their Puerto Rico and Caribbean guides. That involved doing on the ground research last summer. Though I’d lived in PR for 2.5 years, I learned so much more about the island approaching it in this new way.

As for my newest projects, there are a few. One that’s totally not a money-maker but is really important to me is Cuaderno Inedito, a blog about the writing and editing life. I love that my friend Steve Roll of Travelojos calls it an online salon for writers. I’ve really come to view it as that, and am committed to being really transparent about my own writing and editing processes so other writers and editors can learn and share their own experiences.

Another project is a just-finished book proposal. If accepted by the publisher, the book will allow me to really work closely with people in the travel industry in Latin America to help raise the profile of the region as more than just a destination for backpackers. I’m really excited about this project and am hoping to hear good news from the publisher later this week.

Your profession allows you to travel to exotic places. What have been some of your sauciest travel experiences?
I’ve been able to travel to some extraordinary places – but then again, I view every place as extraordinary. My regular travels to visit Francisco’s family in Cuba are always saucy. A month-long trip to the middle-of-nowhere Colombia in 2008 was definitely saucy! Guantanamo Bay detention facility? SUPER saucy. Living in Mexico City from 2007 to 2009 was the best kind of saucy. Really, though, I think everywhere is saucy. I can be happy and fascinated by any place; it doesn’t have to be conventionally “exotic.”

Between writing and photography, how do you find time to keep track of all your travels? What is the easiest way for you to document and share your travel experiences?
In a word: I don’t. Just yesterday I was browsing through my external hard drive in a search for some video we shot last year and I came across hours and hours of video from other trips, as well as thousands of photos I’d forgotten about. I need to do a better job at processing and storing these materials more quickly. Otherwise, they end up with non-descript file names, sitting on a hard drive, the raw material for dozens of stories that won’t see the light of day for too long. To answer your second question, I love Flickr. And the blog of course. I view it as a digital scrapbook and journal where we can do some initial processing and sharing of experiences.

If you’re a Flickr user, you can easily import your photos from Flickr to Sosauce That way you can pool your travel photos, create an online journal, outline your trips, and write reviews all in one place – Sosauce!

What are your travel plans for this year?  If you could go anywhere to write a story on that location and culture where would it be?
My travel plans for this year are to explore America more thoroughly. Francisco is from Cuba and we just discovered that there are at least 17 towns called Cuba in the US. We want to visit all of them. (Cuba, New York, incidentally, is just a stone’s throw from Mexico, New York, so we figured we’d visit Cuba and Mexico in the same day.) We’ll also be heading out to Montana for a big Matador meet-up. New Hampshire later this month. Family trips to Boston and South Carolina. My brother’s wedding in June. If I could go anywhere it would be anywhere. Seriously. Send me anywhere and I’m happy. What I’m always looking for, no matter where I go, are the overlooked stories of people who may not have a voice or platform to share their experiences. That’s what interests me… the untold stories.

What advice would you give to families who are thinking about traveling for the first time together?
Just do it! When I wrote on my pregnancy and parenting blog (www.9mos.wordpress.com) about traveling with baby Mariel (she’s four months old and has been on six plane trips so far and three road trips), lots of people said “Oh, but you’ll have to carry so much stuff! Your whole life will change.” Not true. First, she’s just an incredible, happy baby who seems to love travel. And second, you don’t have to carry nearly as much as everyone says you do. Just test out traveling with your little one and see how he/she responds.

Francisco hard at work

To be honest, I found it much more difficult to start traveling with Francisco than with Mariel. But that’s another story (and one I tell here).

What does being a Travel Geek mean to you?
To me it means to continue to be completely fascinated with the world. To say “No, we’re not one globalized, indistinct mass,” and to always, always, be willing to listen to others, to put yourself in the position of a student who never tires of learning. That’s a travel geek to me.

Do you consider yourself a Travel Geek? Prove it! Join the community of Travel Geeks on Sosauce at www.sosauce.com to get a premium account, exclusive photo products, discount store items, and a place to recreate and share your travel experiences.



Thanks to Julie for chatting with Sosauce and reminding us how travel can be the gateway to global awareness, cultural learning, and human connection. Keep up with Julie’s busy writer life at her blog, Collazo Projects, or follow her on Twitter.

We want to put the spotlight on more expert travelers! So if you have great advice and amazing tales to share, email us for a chance to be interviewed here on the Sosauce blog.

Read more posts by Alisha

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 3:16 PM and is filed under Spotlight, Traveler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.