Discover the story behind Lenore Greiner—award-winning travel writer, memoirist, and author of Shattered Compass: A Memoir of Loss, Escape, and Renewal, coming this June, 2025. Explore her journey, global writing career, and passion for storytelling through travel and personal transformation.
Following her twin passions of traveling and writing, Lenore’s travel writing has appeared in print, airline in-flights and online, often with her photography.
Her credits include New York Times Travel, WorldHum.com, Delta Airlines’ Sky, Air New Zealand’s Pacific Way, Viator.com, WritingHorseback.com, Wild Junket, Healing Retreats and Spas, Voyageur, Romantic Dining and Travel Letter, and more.
Her newspaper travel features have run in Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Contra Costa Times, Austin-American Statesman, Portland Oregonian, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Seattle Times, Boulder Camera, Hartford Courant, and Sacramento Bee, to list a few. As a stringer for the Oakland Tribune, she published local travel features and interviews.
Lenore’s Travel Writing Awards
Lenore has won eight Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing, including:
- Bronze, Cutlure and Ideas, “Translating Respect”
- Gold, Travel Memoir, “From Mill Valley With Love”
- Gold, Culture and Ideas, “Exploding Valencia”
- Silver, Women’s Travel, “Ashram Dharma”
- Silver, Most Unforgettable Character, “Mud and Lotus Flowers”
- Silver, Travel and Shopping, “The World’s Most Dangerous Shopping Trip”
- Bronze, Most Unforgettable Character, “A Different Kind of Invisible”
- Bronze, Cruise Story, “The Slot”
Lenore’s Travel Narrative & Memoir Honors
- Her memoir piece, “Translating Respect,” was honored in Best American Travel Writing 2013, edited by Elizabeth Gilbert.
- In 2020, 2022 and 2025, she published memoir and travel narratives in three volumes of Shaking the Tree, the annual anthology curated by the International Memoir Writers Association.
- In 2022, two stories were accepted for “The Guilded Pen,” an anthology published by the San Diego Writers & Editors Guild.
- Her travel narrative, “Translating Respect,” was published by Travelers Tales’ Tales to Go.
Lenore’s Speaking
Passionate about travel storytelling, as a speaker Lenore shares her insights on the craft of travel writing and the travel narrative for memoirists.
- For the San Diego Writers Festival, Lenore organized and participated in a travel writing panel on “Create a Sense of Place with Travel Writing.”
Also at the festival, she presented her story, “My Father’s Moon,” from the International Memoir Writers Association’s latest Shaking the Tree anthology. - Wandering Words – Lenore read stories and shared with other travel writers about our work.
- Lenore spoke to the International Memoir Writers Association on “How Travel Writing Created the First Memoir.“
- Spring for Writing Conference at San Diego Writer’s Ink – Lenore taught a class on the craft of travel writing.
- Fall for Writing Conference at San Diego Writer’s Ink – Lenore presented on “Break into Travel Writing.”
- Women’s Museum of California
- Dime Stories
Lenore’s Travel Writing Classes
Since 2019, Lenore has taught travel writing classes at San Diego Writers Ink, an arts organization supporting writers of all genres. She teaches how to write travel narratives and break into travel writing.
She also teaches a class called “Create a Sense of Place through Journaling.”
Lenore’s Guidebook Credits
Lenore has contributed to many editions of Fodors Gold Guides, including San Diego, California, Las Vegas, Southern California, and Healthy Escapes.
For eleven years, she contributed to the Travel Guide to California, covering everything from desert communities, shopping to exploring Riverside County and the San Bernardino Mountains.
In 2014, she authored Las Vegas, a guidebook for Indie Travel Media, Ltd.