A Woman's Passion for Travel - About the Author

Marybeth Bond has not always been a Gutsy Woman. During summer camp, at the age of ten, she was nicknamed “Misty” because she had a bad case of homesickness. Not one of her counselors would have predicted the bright travel career that lay ahead.

Now a nationally recognized travel expert, speaker, and media personality known as the “Gutsy Traveler,” she is the award-winning author/editor of seven women’s travel books including the national bestseller, A Woman’s World, winner of the prestigious Lowell Thomas Gold Medal for Best Travel Book from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.

Marybeth has walked, hiked, climbed, cycled, and kayaked her way through six continents and more than seventy countries. Her travels have taken her from the depths of the Flores Sea to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, across the Himalayas and the Sahara Desert. She made her first gutsy decision when she left a successful corporate career, put her worldly possessions in storage, and bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok. While some thought (and told her) she was nuts, she traveled “single and solo” for two years around the world. It was during her travels that she discovered the “gutsy woman” within herself and had the time of her life.

Marybeth continues to criss-cross the globe educating, enlightening, and empowering others to explore it through travel. Whether your idea of a “gutsy traveler” is taking your first plane ride across the Atlantic, navigating the promenades of Paris, or rafting in the Rockies, Marybeth’s travel tips, know-how, and practical advice will guide you along the way.

A highly sought after speaker, Marybeth has addressed numerous consumer groups, corporations, and industry insiders about the amazing benefits of travel. She’s also appeared on more than 250 network and cable media outlets including CBS, ABC, FOX, NBC, CNN, NPR to name a few. She was a featured guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she discussed with Oprah how it is through travel that women can refresh, renew, and recharge themselves and be ready to take on the world.

Currently Marybeth is Adventure Editor for TravelGirl Magazine and a travel correspondent for iVillage.com and USAToday.com. Her articles have been published in magazines and newspapers around the country.

Marybeth is a member of National Association of Journal-ists and Authors and the Society of American Travel Writers and was an advisor for Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

She now lives in Northern California with her husband (whom she met while trekking in Nepal!), two daughters and the family dog. Please visit her web site at www.gutsy-traveler.com for more news, updates, and travel advice from Marybeth.

Pamela Michael has been a freelance writer for over twenty years. In the 1980's she wrote for technical audio journals and later began doing curriculum development for the Discovery Channel. While director of the United Nations'-sponsored International Task Force on Media and Education, she edited a groundbreaking book on media's role in education called The Whole World is Watching (UNESCO 1992).

In her youth, Pam crossed the U.S. several times, by thumb, rail, bu,s and car, sometimes with her infant son in tow (and often her Irish wolfhound as well). She didn't leave the continent until she was over forty, but has made up for lost time, visiting over thirty countries in the last decade. In 1997, she won the British Airways/Book Passage Travel Writing Grand Prize for her story, The Khan Men of Agra. In 2003, the anthology she edited with her writing group, Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel won the National Association of Travel Journalists Award for Best Travel Book of 2002. Her most recent book, River of Words: Images and Poetry in Praise of Water, won the 2004 Skipping Stones Award for “best book on ecology or nature.”

Pam has written numerous articles on education, community, media, and travel for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner, Resurgence, Odyssey, Salon.com, Shape, Orion Afield, Maiden Voyages, and others. Her Travelers’ Tales books include, in addition to A Woman’s Passion for Travel, A Mother's World: Journeys of the Heart (also with Marybeth Bond), and The Gift of Rivers.

Michael is the co-founder (with former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass) of River of Words, an international non-profit organization that fosters environmental and art education in affiliation with The Library of Congress. River of Words operates one of the first art galleries in the country devoted to children’s art, Young at Art, in Berkeley, California.

Also a longtime radio journalist, Pamela is the travel editor of KPFA-fm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her earlier radio work includes writing and producing a four-part series on Buddhism in the United States, narrated by Richard Gere. Pamela lives on the “morning side” of Mt. Diablo in Northern California.

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A Woman's Passion for Travel - About the Author

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