Charles N. Barnard
Whether roped to a Swiss mountain, scuba diving a reef in Tahiti, playing polo on elephant-back in Nepal, or learning to fly his own plane, this TravelClassics.com Managing Editor has roamed seven continents. For three decades, millions of Americans have found his descriptive gifts in leading magazines: Travel & Leisure, Signature, Reader's Digest, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, and Modern Maturity. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Charles N. Barnard has written about the world since his days as a U.S. Army news correspondent and Stars & Stripes contributor in World War II. Fellow writers have known him as a Senior Editor at Saturday Evening Post, as Editor-in-chief of True and, for 14 years, Travel Editor of Modern Maturity. He is an annual guest speaker at the Troutbeck writers' conference and the author of two travel books, I Drank the Water Everywhere and The Winter People. He is a three-time winner of Lowell Thomas awards, given by the Society of American Travel Writers.

Karen Berger
New York based writer Karen Berger believes that the best way to see a country is slowly -- and by slowly, she means 2 1/2 miles an hour. In the last 10 years, she has walked more than 16,000 miles on five continents. "Seeing a country one step at a time gives you an opportunity to meet local people of all walks of life, notice details you'd otherwise miss, and go off the beaten track," she says. "Not to mention that you really work up an appetite for food and wine -- but you don't have to worry about gaining weight." In "A Toast to Belgium", she discovers the pleasures of Belgian beer. Karen Berger's work has been published in a wide range of magazines, from Islands to Family Circle, and Backpacker to Men's Fitness. She is also a contributing editor at GORP.com, and the author of seven books, including Where the Waters Divide and The Pacific Crest Trail: A Hiker's Companion.

Joe Brancatelli
Joe Brancatelli is a publications consultant whose clients include Forbes, Time Warner, and Times Mirror. He is also the consulting editor and a columnist for biztravel.com, the Internet site for frequent business travelers. He is the former executive editor of Frequent Flyer magazine, Travel Adviser of Travel Holiday, and has written for and edited a wide range of travel and non-travel publications. He recently launched a Web site for business travelers called JoeSentMe.com.

Fred Ferretti
A native New Yorker, Fred Ferretti honed his writing and reporting skills first at The New York Herald Tribune, where he reported while still studying for his Bachelor's degree in English Literature --- later at The New York Times. His political and investigative work earned him two Pulitzer Prize nominations. Between his newspaper stints, Ferretti was editor, producer and correspondent for NBC-TV News. It was during his days at The Times that his interests changed from politics to cooking, from rubber chicken lunches to forays into food history, a subject that consumes him. After leaving The Times he created and wrote, for 15 years, Gourmet magazine's column, "A Gourmet At Large." His food writing, which he calls "a continual joy," is a natural continuation of that earlier work, and he has written for virtually every major magazine in the United States (and others elsewhere) and is the author of five books, the most recent, Café des Artistes, a history of that famous restaurant, its surroundings and its historical context. He is married to Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, renowned cookbook author and cookery teacher.

Katharine Fletcher
Katharine Fletcher is a Canadian freelance travel writer whose stories feature the cultures and adventures she experiences throughout the world. She is co-author of Quebec Off the Beaten Path (Globe Pequot Press, 4th edition), and authored four guides to the human and natural history of Canada's spectacular National Capital Region.

Eunice Fried
In the years since Eunice Fried has been writing about wine, travel and food, she has visited vineyards in nearly every winemaking country, picked grapes in Burgundy, tied vines in California, judged in many leading wine competitions and lived in French wine country. Her last book, Burgundy: The Country, The Wines, The People won three writing honors including the Wines and Wines Outstanding Wine Writer award. Her articles have appeared in Quarterly Review of Wines, Connoisseur, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, New York Times, Seasons, Fine Wine Folio and House Beautiful, among other publications. When she isn't traveling and writing, she is talking about wine at the Harvard Club, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, Union League Club and for wine clubs and alumni and corporate meetings.

Carrie Gaska
Carrie Gaska ("Fish Fry: Rite of Spring in a Small Mid-Western Town") is president of Mom de Plume and a mother of three. From her rural Wisconsin home she writes for many national magazines including Family Fun, Family Life, American Way, National Geographic Traveler, Victorian Homes and Popular Science.

Margie Goldsmith
New York adventurer Margie Goldsmith will go anywhere and do anything for a good story. She recently climbed to advanced basecamp on Mount Everest, has summitted Mount Rainier, hacked her way through the Cloud Forest of Peru, trekked in Bhutan, kayaked in Belize, scuba dived with Jean Michel Cousteau in the Bahamas, ridden horses in Mexico, hiked in Provence, climbed rocks in Telluride, skiied at the base of the Matterhorn, luxuriated at spas, and written about it all. Her work appears in The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, WALKING, Tennis Magazine, Travel Holiday, SpaFinder, AMC Outdoors, Appalachia Journal, Living in Stamford, and MetroSports, where is a contributing editor.

Emilie Harting
Emilie Harting is a freelance writer and college English professor who is based in Philadelphia. She started out with two literary guides, one to the British Isles and one to New England, both published by William Morrow and translated into Japanese. Her travel articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Country Living, The Philadelphia Inquirer, LanChile, and Distinction.

Judith Kirkwood
The first time Judith Kirkwood visited Italy, she stayed in a two-person tent with her boyfriend (now husband) in a campground on the outskirts of Florence and cooked mainly boiled rice on a gas stove. Her recent visit to Umbria and the meals at Malvarina were infinitely more appealing. After surviving a decade of crazy camping trips, she decided to focus on luxury travel and never looked back, except when she was short of money after tipping for valet parking. Kirkwood contributes regularly to American Way and other inflight magazines and writes for Country Living and National Geographic Traveler. Her work has also appeared in National Wildlife, Discover, and Family Life. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her 14-year-old son, husband, and two impossible dogs.

Dale Ann Leatherman
Dale Ann Leatherman specializes in golf, adventure and the Caribbean for publications such as the Robb Report, Caribbean Travel & Life, LINKS, Executive Traveler, Golf for Women, Meetings & Conventions and Continental. She is the editorial director of Caribbean Escapes, which includes a website, television shows and an annual 400-page coffee table book on upscale island destinations. Dale is the author of Courting Danger (St. Martin's Press 1990), a collaboration with 1930s tennis star and WWII spy Alice Marble which is under movie option.

Karen Misuraca
At home in the heart of the California Wine Country, Karen Misuraca writes guidebooks on California, and articles on golf and international travel for a variety of magazines. She is the author of The 100 Best Golf Resorts of the World; The California Coast; Backroads of the California Wine Country; Quick Escapes From San Francisco; Fun with the Family in Northern California and Our San Francisco. Golf is always on the itinerary when she travels with her companion, Michael Capp, throughout the state. Exploring the world, Karen has been sighted in a snake wine bar in Vietnam; whacking a crocodile with her canoe paddle on the Zambezi; and dodging a shark in the Galapagos.

Tim Nolan
Tim Nolan has enjoyed a varied career as a writer, beginning as a columnist for the school paper at his alma mater, New York's Manhattanville College. He worked as a fire and police reporter for the Gannett chain, then became sports editor and columnist for the Chatham (NY) Courier. After a stint as chief executive speechwriter for a New York City bank, he broke into magazines as an editor for the New York Times/IBM joint venture Profit: Information Technology for Entrepreneurs. Today he writes about golf and travel for publications including Travel & Leisure Golf, Distinction, Travel Holiday, and The Golf Insider. He also contributes regularly to National Geographic Traveler, writing about subjects as diverse as American history and fly fishing. Landscape architecture, sailing the Northeast coast of the U.S., baseball and yoga are among his passions. He is a member of the Metropolitan (New York) Golf Writers Association.

Irene Rawlings
Irene Rawlings ("Irish Crafts") grew up in Detroit, went to school in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and moved to Colorado in the late 60s. Before joining Wiesner as editor of Mountain Living and Log and Timber Style magazines, she wrote extensively on art, travel, and the environment for national publications like Art & Antiques, Country Living Gardener, Town & Country and numerous inflight magazines. Irene has also been art reviewer at the Denver Post, curator of the Anschutz Collection of Western Art and editor-in-chief of Country Home magazine.

Doug Wilson
An icon in sports television, ABC's Emmy-Award-winning producer/director Doug Wilson has participated in the production of 10 Olympic Games, beginning in Innsbruck, Austria in 1964. At the Calgary Games in 1988, Wilson was responsible for worldwide coverage of the figure skating competition as well as the closing ceremony. In addition to his 17 Emmy Awards, Wilson has received the Spirit of Giving Award by the United States Figure Skating Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sports Directory by the Directors Guild of America. For more than 37 years his career with ABC has taken him across five continents to events of all proportions; from Olympic arenas to back room pool halls; from the Grand Prix of Monaco and figure skating in Beijing to wrist-wrestling in Petaluma. Besides his role behind the camera, Wilson gets a thrill from his own sports passion --- the Cresta Run. Once a year this veteran producer travels to Switzerland's St. Moritz to ride a three-quarter corkscrew mile down a mountain side with a 500-foot drop which he takes luge-style on his belly. When not in ice and snow, you can find Wilson rowing on the Hudson River near his home in Irvington, New York where he lives with his wife Betsy.

David Yeadon
A native of Yorkshire, England, David Yeadon has worked as an author, illustrator, journalist, and photographer for more than twenty-five years. He is the author of some 23 books, including The Back of Beyond Travels to the Wild Places of the Earth (HarperCollins), The Way of the Wanderer (Travelers Tales), and most recently, The Worlds Secret Places, (National Geographic Books) --- all of which convey his insatiable passion for hidden corner and back road exploration. A regular contributor to TravelClassics.com, National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, in 1993, Yeadon received the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) Lowell Thomas Gold and Silver Medals for best travel book and best foreign travel feature. He and his wife Ann live in New York's Hudson Valley.

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo
Television cooking personality, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, is a cooking author, writer, teacher, and consultant. She has written nine cookbooks, including The Chinese Kitchen, named by the New York Times as one of the ten best cookbooks of the year. Her most recent book is The Chinese Chicken Cookbook (2004 Simon & Schuster). She travels widely and has consulted with many hotels. For her contribution to cooking, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the New World Festival of Wine and Food in Singapore.