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 | Mar 27, 2019 | Blog, Sports, Stories, Travel
Back in 2008, I received a dream assignment from a gorgeously designed magazine called Lexus that’s read by more than 1 million Lexus drivers in North America. The editor asked if I’d spend a week in January playing baseball at San Francisco Giants fantasy...
by Michael Shapiro | Feb 1, 2019 | Blog, Stories, Travel
In November 2018, my mom saw a story in Art News about the first true Pieter Bruegel the Elder exhibtion ever, to be held at the Kunsthistoriches art museum in Vienna. She asked if I wanted to make a trip to Austria and I said I’d love to but had a book deadline...
by Michael Shapiro | Jan 10, 2019 | Blog, Food, Interviews, Stories, Travel
Last September, a year after Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, I was sent to the island to report a story about how some farmers were shifting from export crops to growing food for local people. I met some savvy, organic, badass farmers,...
by Michael Shapiro | Jul 1, 2018 | Blog, Interviews, Stories, Travel
Dr. Sylvia Earle has been one of my heroes since I saw the 2014 documentary “Mission Blue” about her tireless work on behalf of the oceans that sustain us. I had the privilege of interviewing her for my Saturday Evening Post story, “Oceans on the...
by Michael Shapiro | May 1, 2018 | Blog, Books, Interviews, Literature, Stories, Travel
I’ve long felt a kinship with Wales, perhaps because it’s where one of my favorite writers, Jan Morris, lives. Recently I had the chance to stay overnight and tour Dylan Thomas’s boyhood home in Swansea. Then I visited his other homes in Laugharne...
