Travel teaches and molds us. It certainly changed my own life.
At age 19, I picked up my backpack and schoolbooks and moved from America to Austria. That experience opened my eyes to the world, and I’ve never looked back.
Today, I’m a travel journalist, author, and editor at Go World Travel Magazine. I’m always on the lookout for fascinating tales of travel, but I especially appreciate learning from other female adventurers. They continue to inspire me.
I hope these books will inspire you, too.
The recipe is simple -- take 22 adventurous women, drop them into fascinating destinations around the globe and add exceptional storytelling. The result is a compelling women's travel anthology called A Pink Suitcase: 22 Tales of Women's Travel.
A Pink Suitcase brings together a talented group of daring women as they journey across the globe on adventures that are as unforgettable as they are moving. These intrepid explorers take on the world with wide eyes, an open heart, and a woman's point of view. They tackle Mother Nature, dive into other cultures, and try new things. And in the process, they learn not only about new people and places, but uncover their own hidden strengths.
Mia Kankimäki’s thoughtful travel memoir explores female adventurers of the past, from Karen Blixen of Out of Africa to Yayoi Kusama, an artist who voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. Kankimäki confronts her own personal demons while considering the challenges these mighty women faced as they journeyed into places unknown.
The Women I Think About at Night is part travel essay, part history lesson, and an all-around enjoyable narrative about female adventures who defied cultural norms to build the lives they wanted.
In this "thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women's studies, and travelogue" (Library Journal) Mia Kankimaki recounts her enchanting travels in Japan, Kenya, and Italy while retracing the steps of ten remarkable female pioneers from history.
What can a forty-something childless woman do? Bored with her life and feeling stuck, Mia Kankimaki leaves her job, sells her apartment, and decides to travel the world, following the paths of the female explorers and artists from history who have long inspired her. She flies to Tanzania and then to Kenya to see where Karen Blixen-of Out of Africa fame-lived in the 1920s. In…
Continuing the saga that began in her first book, I Grew My Boobs in China, Savannah Grace moves into new territory with Backpacks and Bra Straps, which takes the reader to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, through Western China, and into Tibet. Grace gracefully weaves in interpersonal dynamics of traveling with family and the backpacking community while coming-of-age during travel in Asia.
Savannah Grace’s best selling, award winning saga of her family’s four-year-long backpacking adventure continues. "Backpacks and Bra Straps" picks up where "I Grew My Boobs in China" leaves off, offering insights into how family dynamics are affected by such intensive togetherness as well as a candid, intriguing look at world-wide travel and the camaraderie of the backpacking community, told from a perceptive young woman’s viewpoint. This second instalment of her Sihpromatum series takes us to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, through Western China and Tibet, and finally, to watch the sun rise over Mount Everest in Nepal. Savannah’s initial reluctance to travel…
Isabella Bird was one of the great female adventurers of the 19th century. She spent six months in the Sandwich Isles (now Hawaii) in 1873 and then traveled in the Rocky Mountains, at a time when Colorado was discussing statehood. Bird’s writing still inspires to this day.
Contemporary author Linda Ballou expands Bird’s unique story in Embrace of the Wild. Ballou deftly digs into Bird’s culture and experience as a women adventurer of those days, bringing Bird again to life for all her fans.
“I have just dropped into the very place I have been seeking but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. “ Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904)
Some people live to travel; Isabella Lucy Bird traveled to live. Dare to saddle up with this equestrian explorer on her way to becoming the best-loved travel writer of her day. Set off on a voyage from England to the South Seas. Jump ship in Honolulu, then hop on board the Kilauea steaming its way to sleepy Hilo. Be captivated by the lavish beauty of the Sandwich Islands. Charge up the flank of a living…
This book is for those who love Paris or even just the dream of Paris. In this collection of fiction and non-fiction tales, a diverse group of writers take the reader to unexpected sides of the City of Lights, with a diverse array of experiences, from a romantic encounter to a heartbreaking mishap. In this enjoyable collection of tales, you can travel to Paris, if only for an evening.
That's Paris, a #1 Hot New Release in Essays & Travelogues, offers "a deep understanding of the enormous and beautiful complexity of Paris." - Global Living Magazine
If you've ever traveled to Paris or dreamed of setting foot on its cobblestone streets, you'll enjoy escaping into this collection of short fiction and nonfiction stories about France's famed capital. From culinary treats (and catastrophes) to swoon-worthy romantic encounters (and heartbreaking mishaps), this anthology takes you on a journey through one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Visit this cosmopolitan metropolis through the eyes of Parisians, Francophiles and travelers who…
Florence Nightingale, Freya Start, Gertrude Bell, Karen Blixen, and many other well-known women share their travel adventures in this wildly audacious and inspiring collection of stories. From encountering a madman in the Amazon to surviving a shipwreck, these intrepid globe-trotters overcome many challenges in their dauntless explorations. This book will show you a different side of these famous women.
Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels the notion by showing how there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. There are also few difficulties, physical or emotional, real or imagined, that have not been met and usually overcome by these same women. Jane Robinson's first book,Wayward Women, was a guide to women travellers and their writing, and having read over a thousand of their books she is uniquely qualified to compile this anthology. Life is never dull for her intrepid…
I was first a clinical social worker and then a social work professor with research focus on older adults. Over the past few years, as I have been writing my own memoir about caring for my parents, I’ve been drawn to memoirs and first-person stories of aging, illness, and death. The best memoirs on these topics describe the emotional transformation in the writer as they process their loss of control, loss of their own or a loved one’s health, and their fear, pain, and suffering. In sharing these stories, we help others empathize with what we’ve gone through and help others be better prepared for similar events in their own lives.
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist and music professor. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' newly single father flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Their daughter watches in disbelief as they reconcile and decide to live together again. She steps in to become her parents' eldercare manager when her mother’s condition worsens, facing old family dynamics and disappointing limitations to available services. Throughout, she attempts to help her parents maintain their humanity in their final years.
Grounded in insights about mental health, health and aging, The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir presents a frank and loving exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her English scholar and poet mother and her pianist father. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' father finds himself single and flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with…
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