Wendy Dale is the author of Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals (Crown). She taught memoir writing for Media Bistro for six years. She is also the co-writer of the Emmy-nominated TV special, The New Adventures of Mother Goose.  Her essays and articles have appeared in Utne Reader, Mental Floss, Public Radio International, and the Writer's Digest website. She currently lives with her husband and two bunnies in Cusco, Peru.

About Wendy Dale

"Wendy is the best instructor I've had, bar none. She continually pushes you and never lets you settle for good enough. She is knowledgeable, patient, helpful, and has an excellent sense of humor! I would take a class again with her anytime." -- Sandra Carpenter

"Wendy is phenomenal! I've taken dozens of writing courses and completed an MFA in creative writing. Never have I received such useful instruction. I'm happy that I'll be starting her advanced course next week." -- Mary Rowland

"Wendy exceeded my expectations. I was stunned by how much practical information I learned and by how much I grew as a writer. The class was, in a word, invaluable!" -- Carly Van Thomme

"Wendy encourages her students to dig deeper -- and the results show. I highly recommend her. She is insightful, conscientious, and supportive. I couldn't ask for more." -- Michele Meek

"Wendy is that tough critic who can be the best thing that happens to your manuscript." -- Lucey Bowen

Acclaim for Wendy's memoir

"Deeply funny." 
   – Vogue Magazine

"Wry, funny."   
  – Outside Magazine

"This is a very smart, very funny book. Wendy Dale is an extremely talented writer who can make even the scariest vacation sound like a good time. I’m off to buy a new suitcase and a few extra passports right now."
   – Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, and Spy

"Mix David Sedaris, Lucille Ball, and a fifth of tequila in a blender [and] you get Wendy Dale, who is quite possibly the funniest travel writer since Homer. But strain off the foamy giggles and you’re left with a raw, smart, and passionate woman in search of herself and awestruck at the beauty of even the ugliest corners of the earth."
   – Deborah C. Kogan, author of Shutterbabe"

"Dale has an amazing ability not only to find intrigue and drama and hardship but to meet them all with an undampened sense of humor and a roving eye for the absurd. And by getting entangled in other people’s lives, as opposed to hiking through rain forests, she enjoys glimpses into worlds forever closed to the average tourist. A few years ago, Janet Malcolm, writing in the New Yorker, complained that she ‘always found travel writing a little boring’ because ‘travel itself is a low-key emotional experience, a pallid affair in comparison with ordinary life’ … which is absolutely true, unless you travel like Wendy Dale."
   – Thomas Swick, travel editor of the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"This is a wonderful book – not a subversive treatise on rule-breaking as the title might suggest, but a witty, insightful memoir of a young woman from an offbeat, though well-traveled family." 
   – Bookpage

"With grace, charm and abundant humor, Dale narrates her meandering story of a childhood regained, ‘a chance to make rash decisions, to take wild risks, to lose everything knowing I’d still have plenty of time to earn it all back.’"
   – Time Out New York

"Funny, impulsive, and alluringly naïve, Wendy Dale is repeatedly swept into adventure and trouble and love, mostly when she’s looking the other way. I had a great time going along on her wacky journey. I read the book in one sitting, reluctantly getting up midway to make a sandwich, placing the open book on the counter so I didn’t have to stop reading."
   – Rita Golden Gelman, author of Tales of a Female Nomad