ABOUT WENDY DALE (SERIES CREATOR)
Wendy Dale is the author of the travel memoir Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger (Crown, 2003). She is also the co-writer of a television special titled “The New Adventures of Mother Goose,” which was nominated for an Emmy. Her articles and essays have appeared in Mental Floss, Utne Reader and on Public Radio International, and she frequently teaches memoir-writing classes for Media Bistro. Way back when she went to UCLA where her majors ranged from theater arts to geography. She later attended film school in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
ABOUT MEG BARBOR (WRITER/ACTRESS)
Meg Barbor received a Bachelor’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, despite warnings from her professors that it was a dying art. She was all set to join the Peace Corps after graduation, but when she attended a RPCV function and learned of the bathroom conditions and relative lack of happy hours, she promptly bailed and came to the conclusion that she wanted to travel for a while on her own terms. After a stint of flowy skirts, pseudo-introspective journaling, midday cocktails with other expats and a bit of teaching English in Europe, Asia and Central America, she decided to attend grad school at Tulane University for lack of any better ideas. She received her Master’s in Global Health Systems and Development, which to her sounded like fancy code words for “study this, we’ll pay you to travel, and you’ll meet hot guys in foreign bars.” After attempting the whole big girl job thing, working for the Federal Government in Chicago, fighting tears at the sight of her cubicle each morning and becoming steadily more depressed by the fact that she actually looked forward to her mid-morning trip downstairs to the Dunkin’ Donuts, she returned to the city she loves - New Orleans. Upon her arrival back to the Big Easy, she began work on a travel memoir of her own. After realizing she had no idea what she was doing, she sought guidance through a memoir writing class taught by Wendy Dale, and then shit got interesting. Meg currently works as a medical writer, which causes her to travel all over the U.S. and meet doctors, most of whom are a lot less good-looking than you would think. |
Acclaim for Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals:
"Wendy Dale is an extremely talented writer who can make even the scariest vacation sound like a good time. I’m off to buy a new suitcase and a few extra passports right now." – Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids and author of Kick Me “Deeply funny.” – Vogue Magazine “With grace, charm and abundant humor, Dale narrates her meandering story of a childhood regained, ‘a chance to make rash decisions, to take wild risks, to lose everything knowing I’d still have plenty of time to earn it all back.’ ” – Time Out New York “This is a wonderful book — not a subversive treatise on rule-breaking as the title might suggest, but a witty, insightful memoir of a young woman from an offbeat, though well-traveled family.” – Bookpage “[Wendy Dale] writes in a glib … voice that is appealing and sympathetic — as well as very funny and, in the end, surprisingly poignant. We root for her as she embarks upon her alarmingly dangerous and foolhardy adventures, praying for her safety and longing to hear more of her sad and funny tales.” – June Sawyers, Chicago Tribune “Dale has an amazing ability not only to find intrigue and drama and hardship but to meet them all with an undampened sense of humor and a roving eye for the absurd. … A few years ago, Janet Malcolm, writing in the New Yorker, complained that she ‘always found travel writing a little boring’ because ‘travel itself is a low-key emotional experience, a pallid affair in comparison with ordinary life’ … which is absolutely true, unless you travel like Wendy Dale.” – Thomas Swick, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel "Mix David Sedaris, Lucille Ball, and a fifth of tequila in a blender [and] you get Wendy Dale, who is quite possibly the funniest travel writer since Homer. But strain off the foamy giggles and you’re left with a raw, smart, and passionate woman in search of herself and awestruck at the beauty of even the ugliest corners of the earth." – Deborah C. Kogan, author of Shutterbabe 
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