Women
A Scidmore Sisterhood, Across Cultures
Japanese TV reporter Miki Ebara plans to make a documentary of Eliza Scidmore. Meanwhile, she turned some of her footage into a 12-minute feature on Scidmore and my first-ever biography of her, for Japan’s NHK World (an English-language channel). It aired on March 27, 2024, during cherry blossom season in Washington and Japan. March 27…
Read MoreMajor Book Event: Meetup With Taft Descendent
In events surrounding the launch of my bool on Eliza Scidmore, it was thrilling — and great fun — to share the stage with presidential great-granddaughter Patricia Taft. We were the featured speakers at a sold-out “Still Blooming Luncheon” on March 23 at the University Club in Washington. The event, sponsored by the National Cherry…
Read MoreQ&A: On Ups and Downs of Writing a Book
I’ve been an independent writer and editor a long time. But no one I know does a better job of running a professional writing business than Paula Tarnapol Whitacre. She kindly devoted space this month in her newsletter to interviewing me about my new book. Here’s the link to read it. Paula seems to quickly…
Read MoreScidmore Biography Set for March 1 Release
The book, published by Oxford University Press, is set for launch in U.S. bookstores on March 1, 2023. If you order from Oxford’s website (at www.oup.com), you can use the promotion code AAFLYG6 to get a 30% discount. Here are some other sources: Bookshop.org benefits independent bookstores with the convenience of online shopping. Politics…
Read MoreRecalling My Fabulous Glacier Bay Research Trip
(Reposted from August 2018) An email out of the blue from U.S. park ranger Caitlin Campbell sparked my first trip to Alaska this summer, capped by a special experience at Glacier Bay. Caiti first contacted me a year ago after stumbling across the original website and blog I started to chronicle my progress on a…
Read MoreScidmore’s Alaska Travel Airs on BBC
Thanks to a recent posting, my brief appearance on BBC2’s “Great American Railroad Journeys” is now online. My interview with the program’s host, Michael Portillo, took place in Juneau in the summer of 2018 during my research trip to Alaska. [Watch the program via this Facebook link.] I was in Alaska at the…
Read MoreEliza Scidmore Sports a New Look
On a research run through the Internet I come across this woodcut illustration of my book subject, Eliza Scidmore. It was made by an L.A. artist named Bijou Karman for an online National Geographic series on “21 Women Travelers Who Changed the World.” You can see the list of women and their portraits here. I…
Read MoreScidmore in Book on Women Writing in WWI
(Reposted from October 14, 2015) Eliza Scidmore, the subject of my biography in progress, appears in a new book of writings by American women in World War I. Author Elizabeth Foxwell took a very different turn in compiling the anthology. Foxwell has spent much of her career immersed in mystery and crime fiction. A true…
Read MoreGirl Scout Patch Includes Scidmore’s Legacy
Washington celebrates the birthday of its famous cherry trees later this month. The city got the first of those trees on March 27, 1912. Two weeks earlier, on March 12, a resident of Savannah, Georgia, founded the Girl Scouts. So, Girl Scouting and Washington’s cherry trees have both been going strong for 106 years. (Many…
Read MoreScidmore, National Geographic Female Explorer
Eliza Scidmore is known largely for her role as the earliest visionary of Washington’s cherry trees. She was also an intrepid traveler. And the National Geographic Society considers her its first female explorer. The Geographic recently spotlighted some of its pioneering women on its blog. I kicked off the series with an article on Eliza…
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