Diana Bletter is the First Prize winner of Family Circle Magazine’s 2011 Fiction Contest, and her novel, The Witches’ Secret, was a semi-finalist in Amazon’s 2009 Breakout Novel Award. Her first book, The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, (written in collaboration with prize-winning photographer Lori Grinker) was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award.
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Glamour, beliefnet.com, tabletmag.org, The North American Review, and has been anthologized. She is Diana grew up on Long Island and attended Cornell University. After graduating with distinction, she went on to work for several newspapers and magazines, including National Lampoon. A wanderer who likes the expatriate life, she has lived in Paris and Rome and now makes her home in a small beach village on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Israel where she and her husband raised six children and an unofficially adopted daughter from Ethiopia.
In 2014 new book's published: A Remarkable Kindness. It's the intertwined story of four American friends in a beach village in northern Israel.
In 2014 new book's published: A Remarkable Kindness. It's the intertwined story of four American friends in a beach village in northern Israel.
How / when did you catch the travel bug?
Reading my first book, The Secret Garden, when I was eight or nine made me aware that there was a whole world waiting to be discovered…and I couldn’t wait to take off!
What was your first travel experience?
After college, I lived in Paris and then Rome—I travelled throughout Europe. (That was B.E., Before Euros, and the dollar stretched like taffy!)
What item will you always carry in your backpack?
I still carry what I always carried: an extra pair of underpants, my journal, a trusty fountain pen with purple ink, and a toothbrush.
Tell us about the best food you have ever eaten on your travels?
Going to Alaska, the best food I ate was at Buckshot Betty’s in the Yukon Territories. She said we could pay with cash or gold nuggets!
Have you been in any seriously scary, dangerous, nerve-wracking situations when you feared for your health, safety, or your lives? If so, please tell us about one of them.
I decided to take off on my motorcycle from New York to Alaska even though I’d only had six motorcycling lessons! But I followed my dream. Something was pushing me to go. It was very scary to turn a hairpin corner, almost hit mountain goats, and then look down the cliff (no guard rails) and see an RV down in the gulley. Yikes!
What have you learned from travelling?
What I learn from traveling is pushing myself farther than I think I can go. But then, I realize, wherever I go, there I am. And the miracle is that I find my braver self on the other side.
Diana Bletter, The Mom Who Took Off On Her Motorcycle, which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/
Thank you for posting the interview! I am honored to be part of the women's travelling community!
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