Rolf Potts
American writer
title: "Rolf Potts" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["american-travel-writers", "american-male-non-fiction-writers", "living-people", "1970-births", "writers-from-wichita,-kansas", "people-from-saline-county,-kansas", "friends-university-people", "george-fox-university-alumni", "university-of-pennsylvania-faculty", "yale-university-faculty", "wichita-north-high-school-alumni"] description: "American writer" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Potts" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary American writer ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox writer"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Rolf Potts |
| image | Rolf Potts at Book Passage in 2008.jpg |
| caption | Rolf Potts talks about his book Marco Polo Didn't Go There |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | Wichita, Kansas, U.S. |
| education | Wichita North High School |
| George Fox University | |
| Bennington College (MFA) | |
| occupation | Writer, journalist |
| genre | Travel writing |
| spouse | Kristen Bush |
| :: |
|name=Rolf Potts |image= Rolf Potts at Book Passage in 2008.jpg |caption= Rolf Potts talks about his book Marco Polo Didn't Go There |birth_date= |birth_place=Wichita, Kansas, U.S. |education = Wichita North High School George Fox University Bennington College (MFA) |occupation=Writer, journalist | genre = Travel writing | spouse = Kristen Bush
Rolf Potts (born October 13, 1970) is an American travel writer, essayist, podcaster, and author. He has written five books, including Vagabonding (Random House, 2003), Marco Polo Didn't Go There (Travelers Tales, 2008), Souvenir (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Vagabond's Way (Ballantine, 2022). The lifestyle philosophies he outlined in Vagabonding are considered to have been a key influence on the digital nomad movement.{{cite web | url=https://www.jamestaylor.me/vagabonding/ | title=Vagabonding author Rolf Potts and the digital nomad lifestyle | date=23 June 2013 | publisher=Creative Life | last = Andrea | first = Sachs | date = 11 December 2020 | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/best-travel-podcasts-pandemic-listening/2020/12/10/44912020-364e-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html | title=With travel podcasts, explore the world through your ear buds | newspaper=Washington Post
Career
Online journalism
The son of schoolteachers from Wichita, Kansas,{{cite web | url= http://www.pw.org/content/world_over_profile_rolf_potts_0 | last = Bures | first = Frank | date = November–December 2008 | title= The World Over: A Profile of Rolf Potts | publisher=Poets & Writers | url= http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/independent/rolf_potts_interview.shtml | title=Rolf Potts on Long-Term Travel | publisher=Transitions Abroad | url= https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/jumping-freight-trains/ | title=Jumping freight trains in the Pacific NW | publisher=Deviate Podcast}} and taking an eight-month "van life before #VanLife" Volkswagen Vanagon journey around North America in the early 1990s.{{cite web | url= https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/van-life-before-vanlife/ | title=Van Life before #VanLife | publisher=Deviate Podcast}} He later taught English in Busan, South Korea before embarking on a pioneering multi-year digital nomad journey, writing from-the-road travel dispatches for such dialup-era online outlets as salonmagazine.com (which later became Salon.com).
In 1999, while traveling in Thailand, Potts attempted to infiltrate the film-set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie called The Beach.{{cite news | last = Potts | first = Rolf | date = 30 January 1999 | url=http://www.salon.com/1999/01/30/feature1_9/ | title=Storming "The Beach" | work=Salon.com | last = Bramucci | first = Steve | date = 7 December 2022 | title= The Vagabond's Way — 366 Meditations On Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel | publisher=Uproxx
Potts' travel writing has appeared in venues such as Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Slate, and The Atlantic. In 2010, he wrote and field-produced an online video series about a six-week journey that took him around the world with no luggage or bags of any kind.{{cite web | url= https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/rolf-potts-circles-globe-luggage-carry-bag/story | last = Mayerowitz | first = Scott | date = 19 August 2010 | title= Man Circles the Globe Without Luggage | publisher=ABC News | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url=http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/05/02/110502ta_talk_potts | date = 2 May 2011 | title=Canon Fodder | magazine=The New Yorker | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url= https://believermag.com/the-tourist-who-influenced-the-terrorists/ | date = October 2006 | title=The Tourist Who Influenced the Terrorists | publisher=The Believer | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url= https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/magazine/07wwln-essay-t.html | date = 7 October 2007 | title=The New B Movie | magazine=The New York Times Magazine | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url= https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/last-antiwar-poem/ | date = 14 November 2006 | title=The Last Anti-War Poem | magazine=The Nation | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url=https://www.si.com/more-sports/2012/12/04/kansas-brandon-brown-murder | date = 4 December 2012 | title=Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town, raises questions | magazine=Sports Illustrated
Books
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, Potts' first book, mixes practical advice with philosophical insights about the value of travel. Upon its release in 2003, the Boston Globe called it "a valuable contribution to our thinking, not only about travel, but about life and work."{{cite news | last = Morgan | first = Stephen | date = 2 February 2003 | title=Advice for the vagabond in all of us | newspaper=Boston Globe | url= https://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2003-09-22-potts_x.htm | date = 10 January 2003 | title= For Rolf Potts, every day is a winding road | newspaper=USA Today | last = Potts | first = Rolf | url= http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-books/we_dont_really_know_jack_20070905/ | date = 5 September 2007 | title=We Don't (Really) Know Jack | publisher=World Hum
Potts' second travel book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer, debuted in 2008. The book won a Lowell Thomas Award in the United States, and in 2009 became the first American-authored book to win Italy's Bruce Chatwin Prize for international travel writing.{{cite web |url = http://travelerstales.com/002653.shtml |title = Marco Polo Didn't Go There Wins 2 Awards |publisher = Travelers Tales |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://archive.today/20130204152829/http://travelerstales.com/002653.shtml |archive-date = 2013-02-04 | last = Daniel | first = Diane | url = https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2018/06/12/spoons-magnets-rocks-new-book-looks-history-souvenirs/2mSwaM5b4zKSGMQlTpR6BJ/story.html | date = 12 June 2018 | title=Spoons, magnets, rocks: New Book looks at the history of souvenirs | newspaper=Boston Globe
TV, film, and popular culture
Potts was featured in several episodes of the 2007 National Geographic Adventure documentary Odyssey: Driving Around the World,{{cite web | url= https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2765650/ | title= Rolf Potts | website=Internet Movie Database | last = Cynthia | first = Fuchs | url = https://www.popmatters.com/185496-gringo-trails-invading-backpackers-2495618967.html | date=5 September 2014 | title= 'Gringo Trails' Explores the Complicated Business of Tourism | publisher= PopMatters
In "Burn Rate," a 2022 episode in the sixth season of Showtime's Billions, Rian (Eva Victor) brandishes a copy of Vagabonding while "visualizing" a long-term journey in her office ("Rolf shows us how," she tells a coworker).{{cite web | url= https://subslikescript.com/series/Billions-4270492/season-6/episode-4-Burn_Rate | title= Billions, Season 6, Episode 4 - Burn Rate (full transcript) | website=Subtitles-like Scripts | url= https://www.vulture.com/article/billions-recap-season-7-episode-11-axe-global.html | date=20 September 2023 | title= Billions Recap: Minted | publisher= Vulture
Guest lecturing
Potts was the 2011-2012 ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House.{{cite web |url=https://www.english.upenn.edu/people/rolf-potts |title=Department of English: Rolf Potts |publisher=University of Pennsylvania | url=https://english.yale.edu/people/rolf-potts | title=Rolf Potts, Lecturer in English | publisher=Yale University Department of English | url= https://pariswritingworkshops.com/ | title=Instructors | publisher=Paris Writing Workshops
Personal life
When not traveling, Potts lives in a small farmhouse on 30 acres of land in rural north-central Kansas. He is married to actress Kristen Bush.
References
References
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