Alison J. Stein finds writing a bio that’s both interesting and enlightening to be a challenge, and would greatly prefer to let her work speak for itself.

On the other hand, she understands that it’s important for people to know who it is, exactly, that they’re reading, especially when said people are reading about travel, because so much of what you experience when you’re someplace else depends on your personality, preferences and life history.

So to get this over with give you the essentials. Alison was born and raised in Manhattan. She lived outside New York City for about 12 years (college inclusive)  in various non-urban locations around the Northeast. She was very glad to come home to the city, and she now lives in Greenwich Village.

Travel is a non-negotiable part of Alison’s life. There’s no way to give a list of the places she’s been without sounding like a tedious snot, so she won’t do it here, but her passport always needs extra pages.

She’s the culinary travel editor for About.com. Her work has appeared in American Archaeology, Business Traveler, BusinessWeek, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Continental, Fast Company, Glamour, Huffington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Men’s Journal, Money, Mother Jones, New York Magazine, Psychology Today, Reason, Robb Report, Sierra Magazine, The Street.com, US Air magazine, USA Weekend, The Washington Post, World Hum (The Travel Channel), Working Mother, Yankee, Yoga Journal, among other places.

She’s been a contributing editor at Inc. magazine, editor-at-large at American Demographics magazine, a New York Times Professional Fellow and a National Press Foundation Fellow. Her articles have won awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the American Society of Business Press Editors.

FTC Disclosure: I go into some detail and a minor rant about this here, but the short version is this: I receive many items to review in the course of my work, ranging from books to hotel rooms. I do not enter into agreements to cover any thing, whether it’s a book, destination, hotel or attraction, in any particular way — or at all, for that matter. There’s no quid pro quo. I am paid only by media outlets, and I do not receive payment for my professional services by any other entity in the travel industry.