Dave Fox is an award-winning humor and travel writer, and public speaker. He spends several months in Europe each year as a tour guide for Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door. A former news anchor for Wisconsin Public Radio, he has written for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and book publishers including:

• Rick Steves
• Lonely Planet
• Trips
• Big World
• Transitions Abroad
• Silver Kris (Singapore Airlines in-flight magazine)
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• The Portland Oregonian
• The Wisconsin State Journal
• The Dallas Morning News

His writing has also appeared in letters to his mother, though not often enough if you ask her.

Dave won the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop Book Proposal Contest in 2004, sponsored by the University of Dayton, Ohio. He received a 2,000-dollar publishing and promotions package from AuthorHouse Books for his proposal to write a collection of humorous stories about things that have gone wrong in his international travels. Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad was initially released by AuthorHouse in 2006 and was selected as a "new and notable" travel book by Amazon.com.

The first edition of the book was self-published and self-edited. Dave ended his contract with AuthorHouse in 2008 after Inkwater Press purchased the rights to a second edition. That edition was published in March, 2008. (Read more about the two different editions.)

Dave got started in travel writing by journaling about his travels, which he has been doing ever since he lived in England at age seven. With his unique approach to travel journaling, he teaches travelers how to weave together their "inner journey" and "outer journey" to create a more vivid journal. His classes were recommended in the Wall Street Journal in February, 2003. He recently signed a deal with Inkwater Press to write Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip). That book is scheduled for publication in the summer of 2008. Dave has also released The Fox that Quacked: Essays from Planet Earth, an audiobook of his humor essays. The CD includes humorous stories from home and abroad.

Foreign travel has been a big part of Dave's life since childhood. He has lived in Norway, Turkey, and England, and traveled in more than 35 countries on five continents. In addition to his work for Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door, he has also worked on cruise ships as a guest lecturer for Holland America Lines. He has been a Scandinavian cultural consultant to the History Channel program, "Weird US," and an opening speaker for Princess Märtha Louise of Norway. In March and April of 2009, in partnership with Northwest Travel Services and Oceania Cruises, he will teach a Travel Journaling Seminar at Sea on a trans-Atlantic cruise from Brazil to Spain via Cape Verde and Morocco.

Dave lectures frequently on a variety of topics — from informative writing and travel seminars to humorous keynotes about his overseas misadventures. He has a Bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has studied linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway. He currently lives in Seattle.

You can e-mail Dave at dave@davethefox.com.