Kathleen Bryant was six months old when her parents bundled her up for her first road trip west, and she’s been traveling ever since. Many of her favorite places are within the slickrock canyons and high deserts of the Four Corners, but her love for the region encompasses its cultures and cuisines as much as its landscapes. Starry skies, spicy food, rabbitbrush-lined roadways, and summer monsoon storms are some of the reasons why she’s called the Southwest home for more than 20 years.

An avid hiker and history buff, Kathleen is particularly interested in Southwestern prehistory, a fascination that has taken her to places as diverse the backcountry trails of Chaco Canyon and a lab classroom in which she scrubbed pottery shards with a toothbrush. She has also volunteered for the Forest Service, monitoring and stabilizing archaeological sites and leading visitors on tours of ruins and rock art.

Kathleen has written 11 books, including the award-winning children’s story Kokopelli’s Gift and the scenic guides Sedona & Red Rock Country and Four Corners: Timeless Lands of the Southwest. In writing Western National Parks’ Lodges Cookbook, she combined her love of travel with recipes from historic park lodges. She has contributed stories to American Archaeology, American Artist, Arizona Highways, Sunset, and other magazines. In between writing her own books and articles, she has worked on numerous projects for other authors, from hiking guides and cookbooks to Tad Nichols’s haunting tribute to a drowned canyon, Glen Canyon: Images of a Lost World.