Writer
O'Neil is best known for travel articles that appeared in The Washington Post from 1986 to 2003 as well as articles for other newspapers, magazines, websites and literary journals. Publications featuring O'Neil's essays and articles include Travel + Leisure, Elle, Departures, Potomac Review, National Geographic News Toronto Star, among others.
After teaching food writing at L'Academie de Cuisine, in Bethesda, near Washington, DC, O'Neil sought an interview with the doyenne of Mexican culinary history, Diana Kennedy and reported on organic farming in Mexico for Gastronomica.
She is a long time book reviewer and contributor to Bloomsbury Review During a career in the newsroom of the Washington Post, O'Neil wrote about travel, music, health, community events, and technology. One essay commenting on the pervasive use of the word "guys" as a form of address in the U.S., provoked letters to the editor of the newspaper and a subsequent discussion on Voice of America
In search of adventure on the French GR 65 and Spanish footpaths of the Chemin de St-Jacques during 2001, O'Neil walked alone through the Pyrenees Mountains from Hendaye on the Atlantic to Perpignan on the Mediterranean Sea. Pyrenees Pilgrimage, published in 2010, is an account of this journey.
O'Neil started a solo travel career in secondary school, staying in youth hostels and building a global network of travel contacts. The author's travel writing career is discussed in an interview with blogger and writer Rolf Potts. Among other titles, O'Neil is the author of Travel Writing: See the World-Sell the Story and a co-author of Making Waves.
"Travel Writing: A Guide to Research, Writing and Selling", is used by educators in undergraduate and graduate level programs. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Korean. Authors refer to O'Neil's techniques in their own books about how to be a journalist.
Read more about this topic: L. Peat O'Neil
Famous quotes containing the word writer:
“Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn’t brotherly—who lived mostly under his parents’ roof ... who advocated one day’s work and six days “off” as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown ... is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europe has endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form ...”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)