Mark Orwoll

Mark Orwoll is an author, journalist, and former International Editor of Travel + Leisure, which is a fancy way of saying he spent decades convincing editors to pay for his habit of going places where things explode, bite, or ferment in questionable ways.

His areas of so-called “expertise” include bourbon, snake wine, nude saunas, something called a Lubbock pickle burn (don't ask), and learning to love chow-main sandwiches in Moorea—a culinary achievement he ranks just below snail theft. His actual answer when asked about his expertise is “flippant and unprintable,” which, frankly, tells you everything you need to know.

His adventures have included hunting for unexploded ordnance in Cambodia (found some!), fleeing a thoroughly angry hippo on Namibia’s Chobe River (did not find it amusing), and drinking vodka with a wedding party in a Jerusalem bomb shelter while Ghadr-110 medium-range ballistic missiles detonated overhead. He reports that the vodka helped. He has visited 98 countries and territories across all seven continents, and considers Antarctica his most memorable destination—partly for the haunting, otherworldly beauty of the place, and partly because he jumped into the Southern Ocean and then thawed himself out with tequila shots, which is exactly the kind of iffy judgment call that defines his career.

In 2025, he received the Lowell Thomas Travel Writer of the Year silver award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He was unable to attend the awards ceremony because, of course, he was traveling. He has also won a Gold Award from the North American Travel Journalists Association in the adventure category, been inducted into the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels after sharing one mint julep too many with the governor, and holds membership in the International Order of Old Bastards, an organization whose entry requirements he met on the very first try.

One of his most significant professional achievements was persuading the U.S. State Department to issue him two separate passports, which he is “pretty sure” was actually legal.

Orwoll was born and raised in Southern California, where he was, by his own admission, a “typical surfer knucklehead”—a period of his life he looks back on with both fondness and mild regret. He launched his journalism career in San Diego as a street reporter for the Chula Vista Star-News, and later as a staff writer for The Reader, before moving to New York City to work on magazines and discovering, as so many do, that New York City does not easily let go. He has remained in the greater NYC area ever since. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from San Diego State University and an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University, both of which diplomas are filed away somewhere he can’t currently find.

He is married, the father of three, and lives with his wife in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley, where he writes in a treetop studio and leads a classic-rock jam session every Sunday with friends—an activity that his neighbors have not, as of press time, learned to enjoy.

Website: www.markorwoll.com.