In San Francisco, 2015. Cover image taken in Dallol, Ethiopia, 2016, by Kim Mott.
I'm an editor and writer with a love of travel, music, food, and the outdoors. At AAA, I serve as editor in chief of AAA Explorer, and as travel editor of Westways—magazines seen by more than 10 million Americans with every issue. Previously, I was the deputy travel editor of BBC.com, the global news site viewed by more than 60 million readers every month. Before that, I launched and edited SKYE, a groundbreaking AOL weather and adventure website. And in 2000, I co-founded the online travel magazine World Hum, eventually leading it through acquisition by Travel Channel. The site won the gold Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best internet site, and in 2010, it was named a Webby Honoree in the writing category, along with NPR and Vanity Fair. More than a dozen of its stories have appeared in The Best American Travel Writing anthology. In my work as an editor, I’ve published original writing from some of America’s most celebrated authors, from T.C. Boyle to the late Anthony Bourdain.
My own writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Outside, BBC.com, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine and the Boston Globe. For stories, I’ve enrolled in bullfighting school; reported from Fiji during a coup; chased mariachis around Los Angeles; hung out with U.S. customs agents tracking smugglers on the Mexican border; climbed Incan temples in Peru’s Sacred Valley; driven cross-country to revisit Jack Kerouac’s On the Road; chronicled a cartographer mapping Indian Country; embarked on a chile-pepper pilgrimage to Hatch, New Mexico; gone behind the scenes with Imagineers creating Disneyland's Star Wars land; and sat in on editorial meetings with the writers of The Onion. My story Senegal’s Beating Heart about the West African nation’s legendary music scene was featured in the 2021 edition of The Best American Travel Writing anthology, and my essay Lust in Translation, set in Xian, China, was shortlisted in another edition of the book. Other stories, including pieces on Tijuana and Thailand, have appeared in anthologies from Lonely Planet and Travelers' Tales. I speak often about travel writing at universities and industry conferences, and I’ve taught travel writing at UCLA and UC San Diego Extension.
I began my journalism career as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register. I live in Los Angeles, where I'm working on a novel about travel, love, and survival along the U.S.–Mexico border.