about rowan

Rowan McKinnon is a 15-year veteran travel writer for Lonely Planet. He’s worked on various guides to Australia, the USA and the Caribbean, but mostly specialises in the island states of the South Pacific. Rowan’s spent days travelling up the Papua New Guinea’s mighty Sepik River in a 20-metre-long dugout canoe, seen dozens of human skulls in head-hunting shrines in the Solomon Islands, snorkelled with sharks and lived with villagers all in the name of guidebook research.

He had his first title, Papua New Guinea (5th edition) published with Lonely Planet in 1997. Since then he’s done two more editions of LP’s Papua New Guinea & Solomon Islands book, Eastern Caribbean, three editions of South Pacific, two editions of Australia, as well as Melbourne & Victoria, East Coast Australia and the brand new Colorado.

Rowan has also written for www.lonelyplanet.com and contributed to travel-writing anthologies including Lonely Planet’s Unpacked Again.

Rowan has guest lectured in publishing and travel writing for University of Ballarat and RMIT University as well as for the Victorian Writers Centre and the Australian Festival of Travel Writing.

He does various writings on travel, music, arts and architecture. He’s been published by Dwell magazine and National Geographic Traveler among other august publications.

He was once an aspiring ‘serious musician’ being a member of Not Drowning Waving from ’83 to ’94. These days he plays his guitars in his garage, coming full circle.

Rowan tweets using the handle @_rowan7 on various things of interest as well as current affairs in the South Pacific.

A page of bio photos can be found here.