Minority vs. Majority: The Cage Match

What do you get when you combine (A) an optimistic stray cat; (B) a poor white family; and (C) a biracial girl with an eccentric, highly-politicized mother, both of whom are obsessed with Great Afro-Americans in History? 

Find out in the new memoir I contributed to Issue 12 of Switchback, on the theme of Minority vs. Majority! 

I'm Reading TONIGHT in San Francisco

Dog Stew, Painted Penises & Other Global Food Adventures

This evening I drove back to destination book store Book Passage (in Corte Madera) to see the legendary Don George (whom I'd met there 3 months ago at the annual Travel, Food & Photography Conference) launch the latest Lonely Planet anthology, A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World.


The book brings to the table a veritable who's who of food writers, travel writers, and food travel writers. Eleven or twelve (depending on where you place Jan Morris) of the 38 contributors are women (which certainly beats the latest Best American Travel Writing 2010 with its single female contributor!); hard to tell who other than Pico Iyer was a writer of color.


So, on to the dog stew and painted penises (can your food adventure beat these?)... 

WOW!: Women On Wanderlust

Distinguished Visiting Writer Faith Adiele 

Presents

WOW!: Women On Wanderlust:

A Panel of Writers & Editors Answers Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Writing & Publishing 

Travel Fiction & Nonfiction

NonfictioNow & Travel

Photo credit: Sejal Shah

So TRAVEL is on my mind. I'm just back from a trip to my alma mater, the University of Iowa, where I reunited with members of our 9-year-old Travel Writers Group, participated in the biennial NONFICTIONOW CONFERENCE, and - get this - ran into pals from the UK and Kenya: the truly international Laura Fish and Billy Kahora, managing editor of Kwani?, who is helping to coordinate PILGRIMAGES, an ambitious travel writing project (where actual African writers write about - imagine - Africa!). 

The star of the conference was easily the brilliant and hilarious cartoonist/graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel, though the soulful and witty John Edgar Wideman was no slouch either!