<pats adjacent seat> Come sit. Let’s make this first person, it’s nicer.
I am an omnivore, in food and in knowledge. I’ve maintained a life as a freelance writer and editor since 2000 because it has given me the widest access to the world.
Over the decades, I have developed a few fields of expertise:
Arab world and Arabic language
I have a master’s degree in Arabic literature, and I attended the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, an intensive advanced yearlong program, when it was at the American University in Cairo. I am still and forever studying Arabic; I have strong opinions about dialect vs. fusha curriculum, and I’ve tried virtually every Arabic-language app there is.
Although I have traveled extensively and studied in Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, and the UAE, Egypt will always be my heart home in the Arab world (Egyptians are a7san nass!). I covered Cairo for two editions of Lonely Planet’s Egypt guide, in which I got to share my love of the Agricultural Museum, among other city treasures. And in a full-circle process, my book about studying Arabic is now published in paperback by the AUC Press, which is where I got my start as a copy editor, a trade I still ply today.
Greece and migrant issues
I learned the geography of Greece through the refugee “crisis,” starting in 2015, when I was on my usual vacation island and went to see if the Syrians and Iraqis who were arriving on boats needed my help as a translator. That was when I saw that people need food and shelter, but just as important, they need information.
For the next seven years, I poured the skills I’d honed writing travel guides into developing and maintaining information networks for refugees, and for people who wanted to help them. When I wasn’t raising money for books in various languages and delivering them to refugee camps all over Greece, I contributed to Lonely Planet’s Greece guide over several editions, covering Athens, Epirus and Thrace.
Food and cooking
Even more than writing, my daily creative practice is cooking. My parents taught me good taste and basic skills, and I taught myself more in graduate school. When I moved to NYC, I worked at a cooking school in exchange for free classes, and I was a brunch line cook at Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune. For a dozen years I had a food blog, Roving Gastronome (gone now; AI slop ate my old domain).
With Tamara Reynolds, I co-wrote a cookbook, first published by Penguin, that shared all our dinner-party secrets; it was highly praised by Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver (whom we wined and dined for his show Jamie’s American Road Trip; I’m proud that we introduced the producers to Queens).
Astoria, New York
Speaking of Queens, I’ve lived here since 1998, because of the groceries. It’s my heart home in the US — and it doesn’t hurt that I happen to live in a neighborhood with a lot of Arabic-speaking immigrants. (“Astoria — I heard it has a Chinatown for Egyptians?” a cabbie asked me once.) I’ve shared some of my favorite places in the borough in Lonely Planet’s New York guides, and for years I documented Astoria’s unique architecture at Astoria Ugly (complimentary).
New Mexico
I grew up here, and I still call it home-home, but I didn’t truly get to know it until many years later, when I started writing a guidebook to the state for Moon Travel Guides. After three editions, I handed the book over to a new author in 2017. I still go back to the state regularly, and I’ve written about some of my favorite places there for The New York Times and The Art of Eating.
So:
I am interested in travel in its broadest sense, all the encounters and explorations near and far, vacation and migration, the homes we leave and the homes we make, the “exotic” and the “tourist traps,” communication failures and successes. I am a language expert with a deep commitment to human rights and freedom of movement, and I’m good at organizing and mobilizing a crowd, whether it’s for a cause or just for dinner. I love to speak to book groups and radio hosts. Let me know how I can help. 💖🌍