We ended 2024 and started 2025 with a bang! The documentary made its way to California, and that led to a series of podcast interviews, book sales, new friendships, and restorative hugs from old friends.
What a joy it was to bring the Bangkok Barcelona On Foot to California and screen it at a conference that seeded my love of travel writing.
In August 2024, I returned to the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photography Conference in Corte Madera, Calif., and this time I brought our documentary. It was both a homecoming and the perfect place to share our story.
Back in 2004, after finishing my first solo backpacking trip and returning to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived at the time, I heard about this conference and the world of travel writing opened up to me for the first time. Although I was a longtime journalist and freelance writer, it hadn’t occurred to me to write travel stories and personal essays….and get paid for them!
New to this segment of writing, I sat in the presence of travel-writing greatness and, returning several times over the course of the next decade, learning from the best travel writers out there–Don George, Larry Habegger, Tim Cahill, Pico Iyer, Isabelle Allende, Jeff Greenwald, Catharine Hamm, Pauline Frommer, Phil Cousineau, and so many others.
In 2023, early 2024, when we finished the documentary’s film festival circuit, my big wish was to bring the film home to a place and an audience that A.) influenced me so much as a essayist, writer and traveller, and B.) are my people, fellow explorers filled with wanderlust, cultural appreciation, and kind, open-heartedness.
Guess what–it happened! Last summer, I went back to the home of younger adult self and stepped onto the Book Passage stage, surrounded by people who have ventured out into the world in all directions and know the extraordinary joy of meeting strangers in faraway places.
I like to joke, too, that I was the opening, warm-up act for the headliner, Andrew McCarthy, actor, author and still a heart throb, He was Saturday night’s main event.
Since I was solo-speaking and later doing a Q&A guided by Don George, a legendary travel writer, editor, author and conference chairman, I shifted the presentation style.
Together, Lluís and I do a short introduction, use our map to pinpoint the geography, show the film, and then turn the Q&A to the audience.
This time, before introducing the film, I started with a brief guided, meditative story, inviting the audience to walk with me in their minds and hearts. Here’s how that unfolded. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE. (Thanks to my friend Doug Levy for filming this and give me some reminders about how to step onto stage and engage the audience . 🌹)
After the screening, the heart-to-heart conversation with Don George, the chairman and co-founder of the conference , stays with me still.
I’m happy to say people loved the film, and many acknowledged how moved they were by the message of kindness, especially now when the world seems to be spinning on axis away from that.
Here’s a deeply meaningful testimonial from Don, someone I deeply admire.
You’ll find the full playlist of other people sharing their joy about our story HERE. The testimonial video files are too big for this post. 
Another bit of good news is the ripple of story extended beyond the Book Passage bookstore and turned into podcast conversations, which I’ll share in the next post.