Author Bio

About West Coast author Vicki León

Author Vicki León, who grew up on the Oregon and Washington sides of the Columbia River, began digging razor clams at age four. Pursuing the elusive bivalve, she claims, "taught me the value of tenacity" a skill she's used to good advantage in her careers outside clamming. Now with 28 books to her credit, León has been a travel writer, nature book author, and the head of a California publishing house.
The work she's proudest of? Her nine books about real-life women of long ago, from ancient times through the 1870s. As León says, "A stay on Crete decades ago sparked my own Greek odyssey. In the process, I've become a historical detective, following clues about female

achievers until I've unearthed enough to write about them." Now with four recent books in the Uppity Women in history series from Conari Press, León divides her time between Washington, California, and more distant lands. Between books, she's on the road, researching more women or talking to audiences about the remarkable women she's uncovered. An enthusiastic speaker, Vicki also offers fresh perspectives on the men of long ago, from Nero to Paul Revere. As she puts it, "That's my real goal: to reveal our whole human history and to give us a balanced look at our shared past. 

León Live

Vicki León Gives Good Interview:

Event planners! Librarians! Booksellers! Midlist author geeks! Now you can add a dollop of derring-do, a pinch of panache, and a supersized scoop of excitement and wittily presented information at your next writers' conference, book show, store event, or annual meeting. The answer? Vicki León's brand of stand-up history. A seasoned speaker who specializes in the astonishing women of long ago and their parallels with modern times, León can also deliver fresh perspectives on the writing life.

Author of 28 books, including the sassy Uppity Women in history series, León draws on her huge collection of formidable females to create lectures, multi-media presentations, and workshops that entertain, surprise, amuse, and inspire.
After working for three decades in nearly every facet of publishing (freelance writer and photographer, series developer for a California publishing house, marketing and sales director) León also speaks with authority on the writing life--and on mastering the p.r. aspects of authorship, a key tool for nonfiction writers today.

Vicki León has delighted more than 350 audiences of all ages, including the following: Women's Networks and AAUW groups on the West Coast; Junior League of Los Angeles; Pacific Northwest Librarians conference; Oregon Librarians conference; the Celebrate History festival; Literary Women Bay Area Festival of Authors;Cal Poly University; Gwynned-Mercy College; Women's History Month celebrations; King County Libraries Northwest Mosaic programs; Friends of the Library groups in three states; Central Coast Women's Political Conference; International Food, Wine, & Travel Writers Association conference; Monterey Indie Booksellers Festival.
She also does personal appearances (sometimes in period costume) and multi-session workshops, and has appeared in such varied venues as the Renaissance Faires in Pennsylvania and California, Literary Lions annual Benefits in Seattle, and Elderhostel workshops. To book: Email with details of your event and audience for fee schedule
and author availability.

Tracking the faint traces of long-ago women, time-traveling gumshoe Vicki León does some tomb-hopping in the remains of ancient Egypt

For interviews and press kits, please contact lrussell@conari.com

BOOK SECTION

Other books by Vicki León include:

Travel
San Luis Obispo: County, Coast & Castle
(paper and hardcover)
Hearst Castle Tour Guidebook
Scenic Highway One
The Monterey Peninsula
California Wineries
The Moneywise Guide to California
The Moneywise Guide to North America

Natural History
A Raft of Sea Otters
Seals & Sea Lions
Tidepools
A Pod of Killer Whales
A Tangle of Octopuses
Wetlands
Wolves
A Rainbow of Songbirds
Parrots, Macaws & Cockatoos

Described by the Los Angeles Tmes as "the Erma Bombeck of the travel trail" for her wacky first book, The Moneywise Guide to California, León went on to garner praise and sales for her works on natural history, some of which are still kicking. A Raft of Sea Otters, published in 1987 and still in print, has sold more than 250,000 copies. Regretfully, León gets no royalties from it, or she would be lollygagging on a beach in Bali at this moment.

A journalist for thirty years, León has also written for such outlets as Travel & Leisure, the N.Y. Times, Alaska, Coastal Living, Earth, Travel/Holiday, Marco Polo, Maiden Voyages, TWA Ambassador, Christian Science Monitor, and for online periodicals.

Digging women for 30 years: a believer in on-site research, Vicki leans on a "billboard" for Plancia Magna, a Roman horn-tooter who adorned her ancient Turkish city with monuments--and signed them all.

Vicki León's raison d'etre uppity
(or what I hope you take away with you)

I love ancient civilizations, and alwys have—my escape reading leans toward archaeology accounts of Egypt and Greece, Mesopotamia and the Mayans. During my married life and my professional vagabond days, I was lucky enough to live in such countries as Spain, Israel, and Greece, and to stay for extended periods in others, such as Turkey and Mexico. At a certain point, I was knee-deep in the spectacular ruins at Knossos on the island of Crete. The art from that civilization knocked me out—and it got me asking: who were these high-profile women, these priestesses and bull-leapers, these Minoan profiles with the snaky hairdos and the slightly naughty smiles? No one could say. The books were mum. Ditto the museum curators. Worse yet, no one cared. When I went back to college in California, I got uniform discouragement on the topic: "there's not much out there about specific women, and anyway, it's almost impossible to find"

Well, I love a good mystery—and the more baffling my search for long-ago women became, the more intrigued and stubborn I got. Locating the female "needles" in the huge, disorganized haystack of written history was quite a chore, especially for earlier eras. But it got easier over time.

I began out of curiosity, really. The thrill of the chase, the interest of a nearly-unsolvable puzzle. But ten years into this scavenger hunt, a weird thing happened. The more women I found, the better I felt about myself. By this I mean braver, more competent, less alone. Corny as it sounds, I began to sense that we as women had our own support group from history. And they were flesh-and-blood women from every walk of life, not just the privileged class. Instead of airy-fairy mythological figures or literary heroines like Helen of Troy or the annoying brush-off of "mom/wife of a famous man..," I found that we had foremothers whose eventful lives would astonish anyone today. Women who adroitly juggled huge families and demanding careers all without the aid of cell phones, indoor plumbing, or chocolate!

Now, when I ran into challenges, I began to think in a new way: "If Merit Ptah could become a doctor in 2700 b.c. Egypt, then surely I can make it as a career woman in our society."

It worked for other obstacles, too. "If women of long ago could survive actual shipwreck, piracy and being sold into slavery, then surely I can survive a few shipwrecks in my personal life."

One of my biggest surprises came late in my research. Although for millennia, women have generally been discriminated against by many a male, I found that their biggest fans frequently were the men in their lives. As individuals, these gals were often the ones that a man was proud to boast about—whether mother, wife, sister, daughter, or a female ancestor. In fact, sometimes his words are the only way in which we know about a given woman.

After dusting off more than a thousand stories of these largely unsung women and their often-heroic lives, I realize that this is what I'm here to do. To fill in the blanks, to make a deeper, stronger connection with my past. Our past. And not just our female past, but our whole human history: the true tales of men AND women, and how their lives have intertwined down through time. So what's the bottom line here? Yeah, sure, I hope you buy one of my books. Or all seven. But more than that, I hope that learning about these grand gals will inspire you to gamble on your life, just the way that they did on theirs.