About Ryan Murdock
I’m Ryan Murdock, the host of Personal Landscapes podcast.
I’ve been writing about travel, culture and the world’s marginal places for over 25 years. My journeys have taken me to 80 countries, including desert expeditions and long solo trips through Central America and East and Southeast Asia.
I’ve written two books you might be interested in.
A Sunny Place for Shady People blends travel writing, anthropology, history and political reportage to show why a journalist could be killed in broad daylight in the tiny European Union member state of Malta, and why those who ordered the hit have gotten away with it. I lived on the island for six years, and I believe the roots of it all are deeply embedded in the culture.
Vagabond Dreams: Road Wisdom from Central America is a firsthand account of a long solo journey through Central America that explores the process of psychological and emotional change experienced by the traveller. It was given a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, which described me as “a powerful new voice in creative nonfiction.”
I was Editor-at-Large (Europe) for Outpost, Canada’s national travel magazine, for around fifteen years. It was the tail end of the golden age of travel writing, and the feature articles I wrote took me across a remote stretch of Canada’s Northwest Territories on foot, into the Central Sahara in search of prehistoric rock art, and around Wales with a drug squad detective hunting for the real King Arthur, among other places.
I still write regularly for The Shift, an independent Maltese news portal, and I’ve appeared in The National Post, Cabana, and on ETalk! (CTV, Canada) and Engineering Catastrophes (Science Channel, USA). I am a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
You can find out more about my writing at www.ryanmurdock.com where I’ve published more than 550 blogs for your enjoyment, going all the way back to 2009.
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