by Michael Shapiro | Jan 31, 2026 | Environment, Featured, Music, Stories, Travel
I was coming home from a day of cross-country skiing when I got the news that Bob Weir had died. Weir and the Grateful Dead had been a part of my life since I saw my first Dead show, in Oakland on December 26, 1980. A teenager from the sheltered suburbs south of San...
by Admin | Jun 17, 2026 | Events, Featured
This three-day seminar has opened the gates to aspiring and working travel writers and photographers for three decades. Shapiro attended the first conference in 1992 and went on to write for the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post and National Geographic. Beyond...
by Michael Shapiro | Jun 15, 2026 | Events, Featured
With stories from the festival founders and musicians, and photos from Jay Blakesberg and other Bay Area luminaries, The Big Twang documents this free festival’s first quarter century. Michael Shapiro with moderate a panel featuring photographer Jay Blakesberg,...
by Admin | Aug 5, 2022 | Blog, Featured, Stories, Travel
In October, 2018, my wife and I joined a group of trekkers led by Jamling Tenzing Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, who in 1953 was the first person (along with Ed Hillary) to reach the top of Mount Everest. For our trek in the Kingdom of Mustang, which borders...
by Admin | Jul 5, 2024 | Featured, Stories, Travel
My editors at National Geographic made it clear to me that they did not want a personal reminiscence about Jan Morris after she died on November 20, 2020. They wanted a piece about Jan’s deep and abiding connection to her adopted home, Wales. She was half Welsh and...
by Michael Shapiro | Aug 1, 2019 | Blog, Featured
Travel writer and photographer Michael Shapiro takes you from Ireland to Guatemala, from Kenya to Ecuador, and talks about how meeting people all over the world helps build bridges and shatter expectations. This talk was given at the 2017 Sonoma County TEDx event in...
