✨ Welcome to our brand-new series, TravMedia's Travel Writer of the Week! ✨

Each week, we'll be shining a spotlight on one of the incredibly talented, passionate, and inspiring Journalists or Editors from our amazing community.

This week, we'd like to shine the spotlight on Mary Novakovich - award-winning travel writer, journalist and author. 

We hope you enjoy - happy reading !!

Where are you based?

I'm based in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire.

What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?

I write for nationals including the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Independent, Mail, i, Sun, plus CNN Travel, Wanderlust, travel trade publications and the occasional report for BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent. My audience is quite a varied one, judging from the range of publications I write for. Much of my focus is on Croatia nowadays: it's where my parents were born and I've been visiting for nearly 50 years. I've written numerous guidebooks and a travelogue about it too. But I also write a lot about other European destinations, namely France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, etc. I write a lot of ski features (despite currently recovering from an injury), and focus hugely on food and culture as well as hiking. 

Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?

Freelance.

What are your professional pet peeves?

I know that commissioning editors are permanently under the cosh, but it can take a very long time to get a response to pitches, even those off the back of a recent conversation. My inbox also gets hammered, but from PRs who adopt a spray-and-pray approach and then send follow-up emails – at times repeatedly – to press releases that aren't relevant to what I write about.

In your past professional life you were …

I had an eight-year stint at the BBC, three of which were spent on the other side of the fence in TV publicity. But since I went freelance in 1997, I've done all sorts of journalism before specialising in travel – TV critic, newspaper production, book editor, music writer, among others. 

Where would you like to return to?

Costa Rica. It's been 20 years, and, frankly, that's just too long. 

What's on your bucket list?

Vietnam tops a very long list. I also want to do more long-distance rail travel (possibly also in Vietnam).

Where do you travel for fun?

Croatia is fun as well as work, and I also adore going to France and Italy when I can. In the UK, I'm often on the North Norfolk coast.

Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …

Back in the days of sketchy to non-existent satnav, I was trying to cross the border from Bosnia to Croatia in a hire car on a twisting mountain road that just stopped abruptly near the top of the mountain and went no further. We had to wind our way back down as a thunderstorm hit, couldn't find the right road, and then ended up driving through burnt-out ghost villages that had been destroyed during the Bosnian war. The wartime graffiti sprayed on the ruins was horrendous and menacing, and just added to the overall feeling of panic and doom.  

What advice would you give your younger professional self?

Don't say yes to everything, especially to work that pays abysmally. 

What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?

Some of my most satisfying work has come out of unexpected situations, so always keep your eyes and ears open for a good story. 

How best should people contact you?

By email: mary.novakovich@gmail.com