Gayle Keck knows how to open a bottle of Champagne with a sword. She’s also a Lowell Thomas Award-winner who writes about travel and food – preferably both at the same time. She has sipped fermented mare’s milk in Kyrgyzstan, dug for truffles in Italy, crafted wine at Napa Valley’s “Crush Camp” and munched her way through every continent except Antarctica, which seems far too focused on frozen food.
Gayle has written for AFAR, Gourmet, National Geographic Traveler, Islands, Executive Traveler, GQ, ForbesLife Executive Woman, Four Seasons, VIA, 360, Auberge and the Zagat San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants guides. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, San Francisco Chronicle, New Orleans Times-Picayune and other major newspapers.
Her pieces have been selected for the anthologies Best Travelers’ Tales 2004 and Best Women’s Travel Writing 2008; her story, “Pirates of the Mediterranean,” won a 2008 Lowell Thomas Award. She also blogs at beenthereatethat.com. Gayle has visited 49 US states (sorry, North Dakota) and more than 40 countries – though her favorite trip was a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, when she met her husband on the airplane.
