Barbara Savage Memorial Award

The Barbara Savage Memorial Award commemorates the late Barbara Savage, author of the bestselling book Miles from Nowhere: A Round-the-World Bicycle Adventure, originally published in 1983 and reissued in 2020. Tragically, Barbara was killed in a cycling accident shortly before the book’s publication. The author’s husband, Larry Savage, created an award fund in cooperation with Mountaineers Books by donating the royalties from sales of Barbara’s book, to encourage personal adventure and writing in the same spirit as Miles from Nowhere.

Barbara Savage Award winners are compelling accounts of personal journeys, typically experienced through a muscle-powered outdoor adventure, that vividly convey the risks, joys, hardships, triumphs, humor, and accidents of fate that are inevitably part of any such journey with “a sense of the comedy of the human experience.”

Barbara Savage “Miles from Nowhere” Memorial Award titles include:

Himalayan Passage: Seven Months in the High Country of Tibet, Nepal, China, India, and Pakistan, by Jeremy Schmidt

Where the Pavement Ends: One Woman’s Bicycle Trip Through Mongolia, China, and Vietnam, by Erika Warmbrunn

Spirited Waters: Soloing South Through the Inside Passage, by Jennifer Hahn

A Blistered Kind of Love: One Couple’s Trial by Trail, by Angela and Duffy Ballard

Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska, by Hank Lentfer

I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, by Gail D. Storey

Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago, by Beth Jusino