Lesley Klenk, PhD, a published writer, blogger, and teacher of travel writing, has made her home primarily in Washington state with a few stints in the Northeast and the Heartland while earning advanced degrees in English.
Her writing meanders through the genres of literary fiction, travelogue, memoir, and creative non-fiction. You can read her work on her travel blog, Travels with Paul, the social media platforms Thurston Talk, Grays Harbor Talk, and the online magazine, LivingBetter50.
Klenk realized her calling as a travel writer after escaping a locked bathroom stall in Mexico, surviving a close encounter with a shrieking hyena in South Africa, and stumbling into an illicit speakeasy in Paris. Her mission is to laugh her way around the world even if she does have to fly economy class.
Klenk writes from a window overlooking Eld Inlet in Olympia, Washington with her golden retriever, Sibby, by her side. Her first novel, How Socrates Bravo Got His Name will be published in Spring 2021 and will be available online at major bookseller sites in ebook and in paperback
Socrates Bravo Jefferson, a young Negro scholar in 1928 Alabama, dreads leaving his family to attend college preparatory school. Through a particularly arduous cotton season in which ownership of their farm hangs in the balance, Socrates’s family struggles to keep their land, while a Farm Bureau agent, a depraved Northern outsider, and a drove of wild hogs threaten to destroy them, the farm’s pickers, and the way they have lived for the last hundred years.
Socrates despairs that all is lost. But, when a painful story from the farm’s past brings the families together, the magic of baseball played under the lights, a plot of vibrant dahlias protected by parasols, and a loved one’s calculated sacrifice all lead to new beginnings for the individuals in How Socrates Bravo Got His Name.
Travels with Paul 