|
Michael Shapiro has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years and has spent the past decade covering the arts, especially music and books, for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.) and national magazines. He's become known for his ability to forge a personal connection with artists such as Smokey Robinson, Lucinda Williams, David Sedaris, Graham Nash, Melissa Etheridge, Amy Tan and Lyle Lovett.
His National Geographic Traveler feature, about Jan Morris' corner of Wales, won the Bedford Pace grand award. And his story about sustainable seafood in Vancouver earned the 2016 Explore Canada Award of Excellence in the culinary category. He has contributed several in-depth interviews to The Sun, a literary magazine, including conversations with Studs Terkel, Barry Lopez and oceanographer Sylvia Earle.
Shapiro's award-winning book, A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration (Travelers' Tales, 2004) is a collection of interviews with the world's top travel authors, including Bill Bryson, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, Paul Theroux, Simon Winchester, Peter Matthiessen and Frances Mayes.
Shapiro has written about the Naadam festival in Mongolia for the Washington Post, tasted tequila in Jalisco for American Way, and spoken with Jane Goodall for O the Oprah Magazine. From 2011 to 2018, he wrote a weekly column about gambling for the San Francisco Chronicle and for four years had a column in the Chronicle's travel section.
He volunteers as a whitewater rafting guide and sea kayak trip leader for Environmental Traveling Companions, a San Francisco-based group that takes physically challenged people on outdoor adventures. In 2016, he co-led a river trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, rowing his wife and others through the river's fiercest rapids, including Lava Falls, without incident.
In 2017, Shapiro delivered a Sonoma County TEDx talk entitled "The Space Between" about how travel can narrow the gaps between people all over the globe and why that's more important than ever. A native of New York, Shapiro graduated from UC Berkeley with high honors and now lives with his wife in Sonoma County. |
