A Hard Place to Leave

In these essays, Marcia simultaneously navigatesthe globe while carving out a second career as a travel writer for majormagazines, while navigating her own past and the bumpy and sometimes complicatedroad of midlife.

Marcia's voice has quiet power, restraint and unadulteratedhonesty. She is unafraid to reveal her vulnerabilities, hurts and failures. Hernarrative style has won her many accolades, including five Lowell Thomas Awardsfor excellence in travel journalism, and the 2021 Solas Award for Travel Storyof the year.

Above all, her stories are about restlessless,the human desire to keep moving. As such, her stories have joyful exuberanceand a sense of wonder, and pack a strong emotional punch.

The essays appeal to anyone who craves a strongstorytelling voice, especially from a writer with an astonishing lifetime ofstories - working for Barbara Walters at ABC News, and traveling the world asan international journalist.

These rich essays dig deep into human vulnerability,and concern the intersection of time and place, home and the road, the past andthe present, and will ignite the readers' imagination.

Marcia is an experienced working journalist, andis deeply cognizant of cultural sensitivities. With a master's degree in foreignpolicy from Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, she also comes to herwork with high intellectual awareness. Though her writing is full of wonder, her work as a traveler is not about what she discovers,especially in developing countries, but rather, what the place helps herdiscover about herself.

Many of these essays have been published inleading outlets: Vogue, Travel + Leisure, BBC, Town & Country, LitHub, TheMillions, Creative Nonfiction, The New York Times, Air Mail, to name but a few,and Marcia retains excellent relationships with her editors in thesepublications.

Marcia's prior book, 100 PLACES IN FRANCE EVERYWOMAN SHOULD GO, debuted as a New York Times Travel Bestseller.

All of these essays, some in a memoir formatabout people she met long ago in her travels as a foreign correspondent, werewritten between the ages of 50 and 60. Women, especially women of a certain age,are hungry for inspiring, literary stories told by someone relatable, whom theytrust. Women are 13 percent more likely than men to have read a book in the last year.

Books of essays are ideally suited for ourattention-challenged population, and each of Marcia's essays are fully formednarratives that are both subtle and powerful.

Writing is Marcia's second career, and this bookwill be emboldening to its readers - and may inspire them to pick up their pensand write, mine their past for a story about a memory that has stayed with them.Marcia teaches at the annual Book Passage Travel Writing Conference, and haswitnessed first-hand the passion of female or middle-aged reader-writers, orboth, seeking literary role models.

Broad target audience to readers of bold travelwriting and fans of Anthony Bourdain, Mary Morris, Andrew McCarthy, ElizabethGilbert, Cheryl Strayed, Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle, Alain de Botton, AimeeNezhukumatathil, Martha Gellhorn, Natalia Ginzburg, SaraWheeler, Don George, Jan Morris.

Broad parallel target audience to readers ofmeditative essays about life, parenting, aging, womanhood including fans of DaniShapiro, Jo Ann Beard, Leslie Jamieson, Rebecca Solnit, Mary Laura Philpott,Sloane Crossley.

Marcia has a devoted following of readers,students and other travel writers worldwide, and has lectured at women's clubsthroughout the world.

Marcia has contacts at all the major networks,podcasts geared to travel, book podcasts, podcasts about women, and podcastsabout women over 50. She also has strong relationships with Maria Shriver'sSUNDAY PAPER newsletter (250,000 subscribers).