Inspiration:
About:
Delighted to have “The Dancing Birds of Fez” included in this newly released anthology Travel Stories of Wonder and Change. Published by Bay Area Travel Writers.
Telling tales at the book launch for “Dance Life” at Kalani on the Big Island.
Works:
Enjoyed our rollicking read on at Book Passage with my fella storytellers for the launch of Travelers’ Tales The Soul of a Great Traveler.
I’ve also been the curator and creator of the “Tantalizing Travel Tales Told by an All-Star Cast” literary series held at the Mill Valley Library and at Book Passage in California.
My stories appear in numerous anthologies, including Vignettes & Postcards From Morocco, Mambo Poa, Travelers’ Tales Best Travel Writing, BATW’s Travel Stories From Around the Globe, Lonely Planet Tales From Nowhere, I Should Have Stayed Home, I Should Have Gone Home, and Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why. I’m the winner of the Bronze Solas Award in Sports for Surviving the Salt; the bronze medal under “Animal Encounter” for Trumpets of Warning; and the gold medal for Most Unforgettable Character in her story, Rada’s Bloom. These stories are included in Wild Life: Travel Adventures of a Worldly Woman.
I’ve enjoyed decades of teaching dance and writing workshops at retreat centers around the world. Some of my most popular are Poetry in Motion, The Writer’s Toolbox, travel writing, and my most favorite— dance as a healing art form. I’m a member of Bay Area Travel Writers and Women’s National Book Association.
Sandwiched between great (and good-lookin’) minds at Weekday Wanderlust including the illustrious host Don George. It was an honor to be asked to read a story from my book Wild Life to a packed house of travel and literary aficionados.
Shared the stage with uber talents: Jeff Greenwald, Amy Gigi Alexander, Lisa Alpine, publisher Larry Habegger, Jill Robinson, Lavinia Spalding, Michael Shapiro, and Don George.
To find out what inspires my writing and travels, read the interviews in Nonfiction Authors Association, Vagablogging, and Travel Style with travel guru Johnny Jet which incorporates my very honest travel preferences, from favorite nude beaches to an allergic reaction to cruises.
Lisa Alpine had me at ‘Hitched the length of South America when I was 21.”— Bruce Northam, author of “The Directions to Happiness: A 135-Country Quest for Life Lessons”
Bruce Northam also “tips his cap to my two favorite hardcore female travel writers” in the Huffington Post, read Eat Pray Love and Be Cautious! It’s gone viral! Versions of the same story are in The Improper, ExpatDailyNews, Camels & Chocolate and TripFilms.
Extended Bio:
The day she turned eighteen, Lisa Alpine moved to Paris. Over the next decade, she waitressed in Switzerland and picked olives in Greece, paddled the Amazon River, and created Dream Weaver Imports, a South American import company with two retail stores and a wholesale business in San Francisco.
In 1983, she gave birth to Galen Marc Alpine. That same year, she founded and published The Fax newspaper in Marin County, California. She then went on to be the Pacific Sun’s Getaway columnist for more than a decade. During this period she also freelanced for Frommers’ America on Wheels, Common Ground, San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Mothering Magazine, Paddler Magazine, Physicians’ Travel & Meeting Guide, Specialty Travel Index, and many other publications.
Photo note: My friend Davis Dalbock took this photo in front of a painting he bought in Bali. He said it matched the color of my dress. I turned to look at it and realized I climbed this active volcano 31 years ago with my infant son in a backpack. We boiled eggs in a steam vent for breakfast when we reached the top of Mt. Batur volcano at sunrise.
With her writing group, the Wild Writing Women, she co-authored Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel published by Globe Pequot Press in 2002. In 2009 Lisa started Good to Go Media with one of her Wild Women cohorts, Carla King, a venture that helped authors get their books out of their head and into the marketplace. They offered workshops and co-authored the Self-Publishing Boot Camp Workbook: Ten Steps to Self-Publishing Success, which they, of course, self-published.
She taught travel writing at The Writing Salon in San Francisco and Berkeley and at Kalani Resort on the Big Island of Hawai’i. For the last two decades, she has also led a plethora of writing and dance workshops in Hawai’i, New Mexico, Italy, Mexico, and France.
She is currently working on several new titles to be published by her imprint Dancing Words Press. Upcoming titles include an embellished historical nonfiction, Wild Blood: Horse Thieves and Whores, about her renegade birth parents and their Gold Rush roots. On a completely different track, her book Dance Life: Movin’ & Groovin’ Around the Globe is a collection of wild stories about dancing around the globe blended with the body-wisdom she has gleaned from twenty years of teaching dance as an ecstatic and healing art form. Blessed Life is another title in the works and will be a story collection focusing on travel with the theme of freedom.
Lisa volunteers for Earth Island Institute and the Marine Mammal Fund and has worked with Ric O’Barry’s (activist in The Cove) team to stop the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. She was interviewed on Smart Green Travel about swimming with wild dolphins. When not wrestling with words, exploring the ecstatic realms of dance, swimming with sea creatures, or waiting for a flight, Lisa is tending her orchards. Her gardens of vivid flowers and abundant fruit remind her that the future is always ripe with possibilities.
I never tire of talking to Lisa Alpine about her exploits, adventures, and fascinating life. She has carved a path that is an inspiration to any free-spirited, or secretly free-spirited woman. — Constance Hale, author of “Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch” and “Sin and Syntax”
If you would like to read my plethora of dynamic posts about events & workshops, dance stories & videos, 
travel getaways & adventures, writing tips, health & inspiration, culture & art, and yummy food stories, click on the links above.