There She Goes

Today we travel with Yukari Kane to Hokkaido, Japan, where, after a kidney transplant, she skis, and bathes in hot springs, and attempts to make peace with a version of Japan she didn’t expect to find.

Yukari Kane is an author, educator and veteran journalist with 20 years of experience including at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. She is co-founder and CEO of Prison Journalism Project and the author of "Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs." The day her book launched in March 2014, she was diagnosed with late-stage kidney failure. She had a kidney transplant with her sister as a donor a year later.

Today we travel with Samantha Schoech to Venice, Italy, where she basks in afternoon espressos, pitchers of Prosecco, flirtation with an Italian man named Fluvio, and the pure happiness of being unfettered.

Samantha is a writer, traveler, and mom in San Francisco where she works as the books editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. Her essays, fiction, and journalism have appeared in many places including the New York Times, Seventeen, and Travel and Leisure. She was once briefly detained in Panama due to a hotel towel kerfuffle. www.samanthaschoech.com

A quick check in about summer and a glimpse of things to come for the remainder of Season 2.

This week, in honor of Father’s Day, we travel with Alison Singh Gee to Yosemite National park in California, where she revisits memories of her father and finally musters the strength to stand up to an old nemesis.

Alison, a former Time Inc. journalist, wrote Where the Peacocks Sing, a Hong Kong-India memoir about her discovery that her Indian-journalist fiancé grew up in a 19th-century palace. She is a professor of creative nonfiction at Scripps College, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and Westways. She is working on a new memoir, about LA’s Chinatown.

This week we travel with Sandra Gail Lambert to the Florida Everglades, where she finds out if her complex solo kayaking plan will be worth the effort –or even possible.

Sandra Gail Lambert writes fiction and memoir that is often about the body and its relationship to the natural world. She is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-nominated memoir A Certain Loneliness and The River's Memory, a novel. Her writing has been widely anthologized and published by The New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Orion, and The Paris Review. Lambert is an NEA Creative Writing Fellow.

Today we travel with Jenna Scatena to a jungle in Northern Thailand where she impetuously entrusts her life to a mysterious, notorious--and potentially dangerous--trekking guide.

Jenna is an independent journalist based in Istanbul and San Francisco. She has been an editor for Sunset and San Francisco Magazines and has reported for American and British media from 21 countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, where her work explores the intersection of place and culture. She’s an international correspondent for Conde Nast Traveler and her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, BBC, San Francisco Chronicle, AFAR, O the Oprah magazine, Marie Claire, and Vogue, among others.

Today we travel with Angela Long to India, where she meets a holy man with an important message for her.

Angela Long is a freelance journalist and multi-genre writer. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Globe and Mail, Utne Reader, and Poetry Ireland Review. She's the author of two books, Observations from Off the Grid (2010), and Every Day We Disappear (2018). While she calls Canada home, she lives part-time in Galicia, Spain where she cares for a growing number of abandoned cats.

Jacqueline is the author of the novels, Passing Love and Searching for Tina Turner . Her essays have been published in Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011 and 2020, and the Huffington Post. She received her MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California Riverside. The Bay Area native lives in Oakland, and continues her travels to nurture her passion for photography and exotic foods.

Today we travel with Pam Mandel to Branson, Missouri, where she finds a state of confusion and an unexpected plot twist in the familiar Passover story.

Pam’s work has appeared in Seattle Met, Lonely Planet, the San Francisco Chronicle, DK Eyewitness, Afar, AAA’s Via Magazine, G Adventures, and the Best Women’s Travel Writing. She co-founded The Statesider, an award-winning publication that curates the most interesting stories about US travel and culture. She's at work on a screenplay based on her gritty coming of age travel memoir, The Same River Twice, A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel.

[Nerd’sEyeView.com](Nerd’sEyeView.com)

Today we travel with Lisa Boice to Ecuador, where she searches for inspiration in the form of one courageous, elusive bird.

When not working her corporate job as a communications manager, Lisa Boice travels the world with her husband in search of birds. Her work has appeared in The Statesider and she has received a handful of Solas Travel Writing Awards from Travelers Tales. Stories of her birding travels can be found at TheAccidentalBirder.com and she is currently working on a memoir.