Why This Queer Writer Collected Stories From the 'Edge of the World'

Alden Jones releases anthology featuring diverse perspectives on traveling while queer

Published: April 21, 2025 | Last Updated: April 22, 2025

"Where are all the queer travel writers?" Alden Jones asked herself at a colleague's retirement party. The Boston-based queer author and travel educator's answer came in creating "Edge of the World," the first anthology to capture LGBTQ+ experiences across borders and cultures. The groundbreaking collection brings together diverse voices exploring the unique challenges, joys and revelations of navigating foreign spaces while queer — filling a critical gap in a genre historically dominated by straight, cisgender perspectives.

Jones found her inspiration at a party honoring an editor at the University of Washington Press, the only queer travelist she had known of. "When we were at his retirement party, I was kind of thinking about, you know, how's this going to evolve now that he was passing the torch," Jones said.

Jones brought significant experience to "Edge of the World," having already established herself in travel writing with her memoir "The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler's Memoir from Costa Rica to Cambodia." Her entry into the genre began during a year teaching English in Costa Rica — an experience that sparked her passion for documenting cross-cultural encounters.

She currently lives in Boston, and attributes this move from New Jersey to the engaged lesbian community there. “[In Boston,] it was like, ‘The lesbians go here on Thursday, they go here Friday, they go here Saturday.’ So, it was such a nice environment to move into," Jones noted.

The move reminded Jones that it can feel easier to find queer spaces away from home, and this is one point she wanted to emphasize in her anthology. She had experience with how things have been in the past and was motivated to create something new and unique to broaden the way queer voices are expressed in travel writing.

Jones found the anthology format ideal for exploring queer travel experiences. "It's not one person's exploration of being queer," she explained. "It's a look at what it means to be queer outside of your own environment." This approach allowed her to showcase multiple perspectives, reflecting the diversity of LGBTQ+ experiences across different cultures and locations.

To start, she had already found the majority of her contributors at the event of the anthology's imagining. "That was the one really wild card piece about this – it's like you don't know what's going to come in. Even if you know the work of the writer you're soliciting, you don't know if it's going to be funny or dark or what it's going to be like," Jones said.

Jones wanted to steer away from the formulaic, one-dimensional quality she’s noticed in other travel writing, works that often include more of a “where to go and where to stay in a hotel” vibe with a “perky, positive tone," she explained. "Sometimes travel is negative, and you need to be able to say that too." This commitment to authenticity invites “Edge of the World” readers to explore both the joys and challenges of queer travel experiences.

As for the stories themselves, they cover topics such as traveling with partners, finding queer communities in spaces you wouldn't expect and coming out to family, all set against a wide variety of locations like Spain, Phnom Penh and Senegal. The writers explore what it is to be queer in these vastly different spaces, whether they are free to express their sexuality or forced to hide it away for their own safety.

"I think a really important thing that I wanted to include was what it was like to travel during the high homophobia era, like the ‘80s. So, I was really happy to get the essay from Sara Orozco about being arrested after a raid on a gay bar in 1985," Jones said.

Other stories include Daisy Hernández's "La Cubana," which details Hernández's experience bringing her nonbinary partner to visit her parents in Cuba who don't understand their gender; Putsata Reang's "The Return," detailing her complex emotions toward coming out to her family in Cambodia who have strong expectations about the way she should be; and Genevieve Hudson's "Myth Maker," which takes the reader through their experience finding queer spaces in Amsterdam.

While all of these experiences are extremely different, they all find their common ground in queer themes, whether it be in forms of gender or sexuality. Jones found similarities across the anecdotes and quotes found in the essays, despite the broad range of topics. "You start to see how these unexpected patterns emerge," she noted.

Jones purposefully saved her own introduction for last, prioritizing the diverse voices she had gathered. “[I wanted to] offer a little bit of my own perspective being queer as a traveler while [explaining how] these themes speak to each other," she said.

In her introduction, Jones shares a revealing moment from Croatia, where a woman questioned whether her pregnancy was intentional. "I am 40 years old and married to a woman," Jones responded. "I don't think it gets more 'on purpose' than this." That brief exchange captures the distinct perspective through which queer travelers navigate the world — an experience that lies at the heart of her book.

For Jones, "Edge of the World" represents an invitation to reimagine an entire genre. "Travel itself is inherently queer," she suggests. "I think we can really experiment more than we have with what traveling means and what it means to explore an uncentered perspective in the form of travel writing." Through these diverse queer voices, readers gain not just new destinations to explore, but entirely new ways of experiencing the journey.