Announcing the Winners of the "Kindness of Strangers" Writing Competition

Last fall lonelyplanet.com announced a writing competition, “The Kindness of Strangers,” inviting readers to send in tales of kindness given or received on the road.

To our gratification and amazement, we received more than 400 entries. A team of Lonely Planet editors has now read through all these stories – our dispositions growing brighter and brighter as we have done so – and we are extremely pleased to announce the results today.

But before we do, we want to thank all of you who took the time to write a tale and send it in. The stories we received were moving and inspiring, and the quality of the writing was very high. In fact, the job of choosing the winners was so difficult that instead of the originally planned three winners, we ended up deciding to honor twelve submissions.

Six of the stories sent to us are going to be published in October in our anthology “The Kindness of Strangers,” right alongside such renowned writers as Jan Morris, Simon Winchester, Pico Iyer and Dave Eggers. The six authors of these stories are: Sarah Levin, Fran Palumbo, Carolyn Swindell, Ginger Adams Otis, Jennie Rothenberg and Laurie McAndish King. We’ll tell you more about these stories and this book in the months to come.

Six more stories will be honored with publication in the On the Road section of lonelyplanet.com, beginning today with Matthew Skeen’s wonderful tale, “The White Flag of Surrender.” The other five web site winners are: James Brennan, Tim Ashby, April Orcutt, Judy Tierney, and Roni Askey-Doran. Look for one of these writers' winning entries to be posted on the last Wednesday of every month.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks again to all of you for your inspired and inspiring tales of kindness on the road. Keep the kindness alive!