LARA & TERENCE

Perpetual globetrotters and authors of some 50 travel guidebooks, countless feature stories, and thousands of hotel and restaurant reviews, Terence Carter and Lara Dunston have experienced more than 60 countries since they started travelling together in the late 1980s. Together the couple have written and updated, and Terence has photographed, guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Dorling Kindersley, Rough Guides, AA Guides, Thomas Cook, Insight, Footprint, and Hedonist’s Guides.

While Lara and Terence began their travel writing careers authoring guides, the first of which was The Sydneyside Guide, which they wrote for a Universal Press compact street directory in 1995, Terence’s publishing career started a decade earlier as a technical writer and throughout the 1990s he designed books, CD-ROMS and websites in Australia and the UAE. During that time, Lara worked in PR and media relations, wrote on film, made films, and taught film and writing. It was Lara’s work that took the Australian-born couple to the United Arab Emirates in 1998 so she could take up a university job teaching media production and writing to Emirati women.

Lara and Terence serendipitously fell back into travel writing after complaining about a disappointing guidebook they’d used to a friend whose sister worked at Lonely Planet. She suggested they send in their complaints for a free travel guide. They did, and those detailed notes resulted in an invitation to submit writing samples to be approved as guidebook authors. Soon after, they were updating Lonely Planet’s Dubai city guide, writing a first edition of Syria and Lebanon, and more book commissions on Paris, Milan, Lisbon and Dubai quickly followed.

While Lara and Terence love how guidebook research enables them to fully explore a city or country and get beneath the skin of a place, they’re just as delighted to fly into a destination for a couple of weeks on magazine commissions to interviews artists, musicians, writers, and chefs. Terry, who is also a musician, and Lara, who has published teen fiction, have a handful of creative degrees between them – Lara’s in filmmaking, cinema, writing, and international studies; Terry’s in film, photography, digital media, and media studies – and for many years they made films together, so it made sense they’d continue to tell stories across all forms of media.

Since resuming their travel writing careers, they have done everything from write interactive walking tours on Paris for the Sony PSP to present destination videos for Lonely Planet TV. They have written hotel reviews for Mr and Mrs Smith, i-escape and Travel Intelligence, digital guides for Sherman’s Travel, World Travel Guide and Fodors, and have been NineMSN Travel’s Dubai Insiders, destination experts for Triporati, and write for the Viator blog, as well as scribbling their own travel blogs. Lara reflects upon the things she finds cool (and not so cool) about travel and travel writing at Cool Travel Guide while Terry writes about photography, food and travel at Wide Angles, Wine and Wanderlust.

The couple’s words and pictures have also appeared in good old-fashioned magazines and newspapers, including National Geographic Traveler, Lifestyle+Travel, Wanderlust, The Independent, USA Today, Hemispheres, Paperplane, Get Lost, Voyageur, Hemispheres, Emirates Open Skies, Gulf Air’s Gulf Life, Jazeera Airways magazine, Connect, M Lifestyle, Ritz-Carlton magazine, Four Seasons magazine, BBC History, Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, and Sunday Telegraph, and have been syndicated in dozens of newspapers in the USA, from the Houston Chronicle to Chicago Tribune. They have also written content for inspirational travel books for Lonely Planet, including The Travel Book, The Asia Book, and Blue List, and Lara wrote for Rough Guides Clean Breaks. They have several books in development including innovative guidebooks with Thames and Hudson.

Lara and Terence have written on a wide range of topics, including airports, architecture, art, chefs, cities, culture, campervanning, entrepreneurs, the environment, eco-tourism, fashion, food, hotels, museums, music, people, roadtrips, restaurants, shopping, and spas. Countries they have experienced include Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel & Palestinian Territories, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, UK, USA and Uruguay.