I am the author of two travel memoirs. East: A Woman on the Road to Kathmandu chronicles  a  journey across Asia in the early 1970s, made mostly by public transit. I grew up along the way as I crossed many lands now closed to American travelers. Following my  return to California, I became a founding editor of the women's news syndicate, Her Say, now archived at Harvard University.  My first book, Floating Point, describes life aboard a boat in the San Francisco Bay during the technology boom years. I teach writing in the San Francisco area and am the editor of ePícaro.com - an online journal of travel narratives by mostly West Coast writers. When not breakfasting with white-faced monkeys in Costa Rica or hitchhiking through the Khyber Pass, I live with my family in California's Santa Cruz Mountains. You can keep in touch through my website at http://www.shelleybuck.com