We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Frye. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.

Jason, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

As a creative, a lot of projects I take on have a personal resonance. I’m a transplant to North Carolina, and in my years of working as a travel writer and guidebook author, I’ve developed a deep and abiding love for my adopted home state. Any chance I get to deepen that connection – by writing about the Outer Banks, where my family vacationed for a decade; by writing about the mountains, a place that truly holds my heart; by interviewing a local character whose conversation causes me to reframe my thoughts about a place – I relish. To that end, my travel guidebook Moon Blue Ridge Parkway Road Trip hits all those notes. After college, I lived in Virginia and spent a lot of time exploring the Blue Ridge Parkway, so when the chance came to relive some of those moments from my early 20s and bring together my affection for North Carolina and our mountains, I knew it was right. Likewise commercial projects – like working on the Official Visitors Guide to North Carolina and the Official Vacation Guide for West Virginia (where I was born) – allow me to connect with a place as I view it from an outsider’s perspective, seeing the place as a visitor and discovering it anew.

Jason, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve always been curious. Growing up in the mountains of West Virginia, I explored every path, road and game trail on my parents’ property, always seeking the sights around the next turn of the trail or over a distant ridgeline. Not everyone gets to satisfy their curiosity in their work, but I’m fortunate enough to get to do just that. But my career didn’t start with travel guides and far-flung trips, it started with a “say yes to everything” freelance grind. Firs there was middle school: I taught for a few years, but I feared becoming that cliche of a Literature teacher who’s “working on a book over summer break,” so I quit and went to graduate school. After earning my MFA in Creative Writing from UNC Wilmington, I started freelancing. At first I wrote anything – a new eye doctor is in town, the chiropractor has expanded their practice, here’s the 10 rising superstars for the region – but soon pitched my editor a beach guide to serve summer visitors, then a story about a kayaking guide and a brewer. Researching the beaches, the kayak trips and the brewery was fun; the stories served visitors and locals and local businesses; and I got paid to do that? It didn’t seem as much like work as some other assignments, so I pitched more, started saying “no” to projects and stories I didn’t want and pushing to write stories that interested me.
Over time my skills grew, my portfolio grew, and soon I wasn’t just writing about Wilmington and Brunswick County, I was telling stories about North Carolina and falling in love with every inch of this place. When the opportunity came to write guidebooks covering the whole state, I was all in. Now I’ve written more than 20 editions of five titles (Moon North Carolina, Moon North Carolina Coast, Moon Blue Ridge Parkway Road Trip, Moon Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Moon Spotlight on Asheville) that keep me traveling across North Carolina. Today, a new title -Moon Top 100 National Parks Hikes (out fall 2024) – has me traveling coast to coast and beyond.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Read our stories. Buy our books. Stop by gallery openings and pick up a piece of art to take home and hang on your wall. Toss out your corporate-branded coffee mugs and pick up funky, quirky, fun replacements from a local potter. Be a champion and a cheerleader for your favorite local chef, the novelists who lives in your town, the standup coming who’s working four gigs a week. Buy something from the student art show. Take advantage of your First Friday gallery crawl or local art festival. Give some encouragement to the young artists, musicians and chefs you encounter. Without an audience, authors like me, Wiley Cash, Jason Mott, we couldn’t do what we do. Without people cheering for food from Chefs like Rickey Moore, Scott Crawford, Ashley Christensen, or bragging about their favorite local brewery, those folks would be dazzling diners and drinkers elsewhere.
So, to support artists and creatives, you have to support them.
On top of that, support arts programs in schools and with organizations that foster artistic activities for kids.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Yes, but admittedly it’s selfish. I’m curious. I want to see everything, taste it all, fill in all the blank spots on my personal map. Along the way I hope I’m fortunate enough to tell a lot of stories about my experiences to a lot of people, encouraging them to step out, explore the world (and their own inner selves) and discover something amazing.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beardedwriter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjasonfrye/

Image Credits
Jason Frye