I tell stories about our world and the journeys that define us. I’ve taken trains across the United States and across Patagonia, camped out on uninhabited city islands within view of the Manhattan skyline, and played folk music with old-time musicians in the Appalachian mountains, among many other adventures. I’ve written essays on climate change, letter-writing, and American Jewish life, and reported on threats facing environmentalists in Colombia. My recent story “The Candy Sellers,” chronicling the experiences of young, Indigenous migrant families from Ecuador who sell candy in the NYC subway, appeared on the cover of New York Magazine. You can find my work in National Geographic, The New York Times, NPR’s All Things Considered and many other publications.
Writing is the backbone of everything I do, but I also work in other formats. I’ve worked on television shows including 60 Minutes & Sesame Street, and co-created The Lulus TV, an English/Spanish children’s digital music series on YouTube that has more than 1.2 million total subscribers and nearly half a billion views from around the world.
I’m most passionate telling stories about people and nature that connect continents and cultures. My first book, Every Day the River Changes, the story of my journey down the greatest river in Colombia, was recently published by Catapult. Upon its release, it was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, a top new travel book by the New York Times, and selected as the “pre-read” for all incoming students at Princeton University, where I graduated in 2019.
My latest book, Stranger in the Desert, a journey across Argentina in search of long-lost relatives, uncovers hidden histories of Arab Jews in the Americas and explores the importance of intergenerational storytelling and the different ways we can investigate our own family stories.
I’m available for speaking engagements, having presented my work widely for groups at universities, libraries, companies, and festivals across the U.S. and Europe. Get in touch here.
Inspired by family lore, a young writer embarks on an epic quest through the Argentine Andes in search of a heritage spanning hemispheres and centuries, from the Jewish Levant to turn-of-the-century trade routes in South America
One Thanksgiving afternoon at his grandparents’ house, Jordan Salama discovers a large binder stuffed with yellowing papers and old photographs—a five-hundred-year wandering history of his Arab-Jewish family, from Moorish Spain to Ottoman Syria to Argentina and beyond.One story in particular captures his attention: that of his great-grandfather, a Syrian-born, Arabic-speaking Jewish immigrant to Argentina who in the 1920s worked as a traveling salesman in the Andes—and may have left behind forgotten descendants along the way. Encouraged by his grandfather, Jordan goes in search of these “Lost Salamas,” traveling more than a thousand miles up the spine of South America’s greatest mountain range.Combining travelog, history, memoir, and reportage, Stranger in the Desert transports readers from the lonely plains of Patagonia to the breathtaking altiplano of the high Andes; from the old Jewish quarter of Damascus to today’s vibrant neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. It is also a fervent journey of self-discovery as Salama grapples with his own Jewish, Arab, and Latin American identities, interrogating the stories families tell themselves, and to what end.
