I love talking to writer and teacher Patrice Vecchione about pretty much anything. So when I invited her to an interview on The Babblery, we had to decide on a topic.
“How about women walking?” she asked. Simple, direct, yet wide open.
I found writer Tania Romanov through a web search—”book by woman about walking in the city”—and then we bonded over coffee when by chance she was driving through my bit of the coast.
I love the contrast of Tania’s city to Patrice’s country—I promise I won’t quote Donny and Marie here, but I am tempted. Contrast strikes creativity. Patrice and Tania don’t know each other, but both having written books about walking, our conversation fell quickly into a comfortable groove. We talked about writing, creativity, fear, aging…
It’s a little hard to sum up, which may be a liability in this age of short-form, quick-cut media. This conversation is long form, an amble through the thoughts and ideas of two women who have walked this far, and still have a long way to go.
Click here to listen to a half-hour version created for the syndicated program Sprouts—”Exploring the world at the speed of andante“!
Listen in!
Poet, nonfiction writer and teacher Patrice Vecchione is the editor several highly acclaimed anthologies. For many years, Vecchione has taught poetry and creative writing to young people through her program, The Heart of the Word: Poetry and the Imagination. She is also a columnist for her local daily paper, The Monterey Herald. Patrice offers writing workshops for adults and children through her program The Heart of the Word.
Tania Romanov is an award-winning travel writer and photographer. She is author of Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women and her latest, a travel story collection, Never a Stranger. A Solas Award winner, Tania’s work has also been featured in multiple travel anthologies and translated into Serbo-Croatian and Russian.
For more information:
- Patrice Vecchione, and her book, Step Into Nature [Amazon, Bookshop]
- Tania Romanov, and her book, A San Francisco Pilgrimage [Amazon, Bookshop]
Other books and articles about walking:
- “City of Women” by Rebecca Solnit
- Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit [Amazon, Bookshop]
- Flâneuse: Women Walk the City by Lauren Elkin [Amazon, Bookshop]
Sounds:
- “Walk on the Fire” by Edith Frost
- SF Muni sounds by Larasark on Freesound.org
- “Walking the Old Growth Loop” by Suki Wessling
