April Orcutt, Your New Website Editor and Board Member

Hello, Fellow Travel Writers –

I’m delighted to join the BATW Board and excited to be BATW’s new Website Editor.  We plan to make the website an even more useful tool for members for showcasing stories and photographs, finding resources and ideas, discovering markets and workshops, and ever-improving our writing and photography.  Of course, we need your contributions for all that.  The site will evolve as we add features (including photo galleries).  Rather than being a separate section, headlines from the newsletter are now in the center column of the website — click on “Bay Area Travel Writers” or “Home” at the top of the page to see all the newsletter information in the center column.  Newsletter information is also grouped by category in the right column so you can click on  individual categories there.  In either case, you can then click on the headlines to get to the detailed information or article.  Beginning in February, 2009, you will also have the option of receiving the newsletter by email (details to come).  We plan to post more articles and photographs from members so please check the website for “Submission Guidelines.”  Please check the “Submission Guidelines” periodically because they may change as we settle into the new website design.  What do you want from the website?  Let me know at webeditor@batw.org.

As for my background, my destination stories and information pieces have run in National Geographic Traveler, Travel and Leisure Online (TravelAndLeisure.com), Lonely Planet Online (LonelyPlanet.com), Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Denver Post, Seattle Times, Kansas City Star, Honolulu Advertiser, Salt Lake City Tribune, Montreal Gazette, many other American and Canadian newspapers.  My travel essays have been published in the books Flightless: Incredible Journeys Without Leaving the Ground (Lonely Planet), A Woman’s Asia, Prague and the Czech Republic, Floating through France: Life Between Locks on the Canal du Midi and a women’s humor book (all Travelers’ Tales).

I created, chaired and taught in the Multimedia/Web Design Program at the College of San Mateo.  Although I got input from other faculty members and the Internet industry, I was the ultimate designer of the program and its course outlines.

In addition to being the Multimedia/Web Design Program Chair, I was a professor in the Broadcast & Electronic Media Department at CSM, and I taught previously at San Francisco State and Sonoma State Universities.

Before that I was a public affairs, documentary and informational television program producer-writer, and I was nominated for a Local Emmy (regional version of the Emmys).

And now I’m a travel writer and your BATW Website Editor.  And I look forward to meeting more BATW members.

– April Orcutt