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I think a lot of people are surprised that I would say when I was eight that I wanted to be a journalist. But she freelanced while I was growing up in Saudi Arabia, so at least I had that as an idea that this is a career.
SARAH THE LAST OF US FULL
She studied journalism in India and she had a full scholarship to Columbia’s School of Journalism, but she couldn’t take it because she had to get married because it was the 70s. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. I managed to catch up with Khan while she and I were in the same time zone, and we chatted about some of the flaws in the travel media industry, what a travel writer does during a global pandemic, and a joint venture she recently started with her friends to promote travel writers of color.
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Even then, when I was in journalism school, it not only felt rare to see a byline belonging to a South Asian woman writer, but also to see a South Asian woman sharing her unique travel experiences through her dispatches. I’ve been following Khan’s work for years, ever since I read her 2013 essay about South Africa. In her 30s she moved to South Africa for three and a half years and started a full-time career as a freelance travel writer there. She was born in Canada, grew up in Saudi Arabia, lived in India for a few of her middle school years, and then moved to the United States as a teenager. The UAE will be the sixth country she has lived in. In a few weeks, she’ll relocate from New York to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Khan, an Indian American travel writer, recently started her new job as the editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Traveller Middle East (read her first editor’s note here). She also received an honorable mention from the Society of American Travel Writers for Travel Writer of the Year. Her essay “ In the City of Saints” about Harar, Ethiopia was selected for The Best American Travel Writing 2021. October has been a good month for Sarah Khan.