Journalist and author Paul Martin spent three decades as a magazine and book editor with the National Geographic Society, the last ten years as the executive editor of National Geographic Traveler. His writing assignments have taken him around the world. Among his Traveler articles are stories on India, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, and Jamaica (see Articles). His features have also appeared on major websites such as Salon, the Huffington Post, and Smithsonian Magazine.

As a spokesperson for Traveler, Paul was a frequent guest on television news shows, including CBS This Morning and CNN travel segments. He has lectured on travel writing in Washington, New York, Boston, and Aspen, and he twice served as a judge for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards, the industry’s foremost competition.

Paul has edited or contributed to over a dozen National Geographic books on history, culture, and science. As an editor with the Society’s children’s magazine, National Geographic World, he wrote the books Messengers to the Brain: Our Fantastic Five Senses and Science: It’s Changing Your World. He’s also edited books for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and other public institutions.

Before joining National Geographic, Paul spent five and half years as the managing editor of Continuing Education for the Family Physician, a monthly medical journal published in Kansas City, Missouri. Prior to that, he was the assistant editor of Outdoors, a monthly boating magazine published by Mercury Marine.

Paul began his career as a Navy journalist. In 1970-71 he served in Vietnam, writing articles for Navy Times, All Hands magazine, Stars & Stripes, the Saigon Post, and other publications. His return to Vietnam twenty-five years later resulted in an article for National Geographic Traveler and the travel memoir Land of the Ascending Dragon: Rediscovering Vietnam.

Born and raised in Clinton, Missouri, Paul is a graduate of Central Missouri State College (now the University of Central Missouri) and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where he was a graduate teaching assistant and a member of the Kappa Tau Alpha honor society. A Mensan, an amateur luthier, and a onetime vineyard owner and winemaker, Paul lives in Virginia just outside Washington, D.C.