Laurie McAndish King

Laurie McAndish King is an award-winning travel writer and photographer whose stories have aired on NPR and been published in Lonely Planet, Travelers’ Tales, and other literary anthologies. Her articles and photography have also been published in magazines such as the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Marin magazine, and Smithsonian.

Lost, Kidnapped, Eaten Alive! is Laurie’s award-winning first collection of travel essays, with select stories from her travels to more than forty countries. Her second collection, Your Crocodile has Arrived, was released in August, 2017.

Award-winning content:

• Lowell Thomas gold award winner, Society of American Travel Writers, cultural tourism writing division. This is the premier competition in North America in the field of travel journalism.
• Associate Producer for the Lowell Thomas Award-winning travel show, Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer, an NPR-affiliate podcast.
• Mobile app about the San Francisco Waterfront (co-written and produced with Suzie Rodriguez) earned a five-star rating on iTunes.
  
• One of Laurie’s photos won first place in Smithsonian magazine’s annual photography contest (from among 60,000 entries) and was displayed for six months at the Smithsonian Institution.
• The book Lost, Kidnapped, Eaten Alive! was the First Place Winner in the General Non-fiction category at the San Francisco Book Festival (2017), was named a Distinguished Favorite in the Travel category of the Independent Press Awards (2017), won the gold award in the Travel Books category in the BATW Best Awards (2017), and won a silver award in the Travel category at the North American Book Awards (2017).

Connected to the travel writing community:

• Long-time board member and President Emerita of San Francisco Bay Area Travel Writers.
• Publishes a popular online newsletter, Travel Writers News, with news, information, and links for San Francisco Bay Area travel writers and photographers.
• Frequently participates in LitQuake as a travel writer.
• Founding member of Left Coast Writers.

A little spice goes a long way:

• Laurie co-edited two anthologies in the Hot Flashes: sexy little stories and poems series, and wrote An Erotic Alphabet, a witty volume of ABCs for adults; for which she was dubbed “The Shel Silverstein of Erotica.”
• Her writing class, From Sense to Sensuality — Enliven Any Genre, was one of the most popular at the recent Central Coast Writers Conference.

Laurie lives in northern California, where she enjoys gardening, taxidermy, and chasing the cosmic serpent.