- New York Times bestselling travel book author.
- Winner of 2024 gold Lowell Thomas Award for best guidebook, 2015 gold Lowell Thomas Award for best travel book, 2021 silver National Outdoor Book Award, three gold Indie” book of the year” awards, and more than 20 others.
- I’m a pianist (classical, church, and pop/rock music) and a piano teacher. I also play cello, bass guitar, hammered dulcimer, and guitar. I’ve written three books about music.
- Claim to fame: I was one of the first women to hike the “Triple Crown” (all 8,000 miles of the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide national scenic trails) — and I’ve hiked a total of 18,000 miles on 6 continents.
- Superpower: Learning new stuff and sharing it with others via books, how-to articles, public speaking, performing, and teaching.
Click to visit my book page, magazine page, photography page, music website, and bio.
Read the Wikipedia article about my work.
Writing News
November, 2024: News just in! Hiking America’s National Parks won the gold Lowell Thomas travel journalism award for best guidebook.
April, 2023. My newest book, Hiking America’s National Parks, was published by Rizzoli. Photographer Jonathan Irish provided the images; former Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell wrote the introduction.
October, 2022. Curious about what it takes to hike the entire Appalachian Trail? Start here: The Appalachian Trail: A Beginner’s Guide, written for Outside, earned an honorable mention in the Lowell Thomas Awards for travel journalism.
August, 2022. For years, I’ve been taking pictures of a tree in my town. Elma — an American elm that survived Dutch elm disease, perhaps by virtue of bring socially distanced in a farm field — has made it into the Library of Congress, the Guardian newspaper, and now, into this story for Berkshire magazine.
March, 2022. Walk into the past with me with this Saturday Evening Post cover story about America’s National Historic Trails.
November, 2021. America’s National Historic Trails won a silver National Outdoor Book Award and the gold history book of the year award from the Foreword Magazine/INDIE’s awards program.
This book, about the intersection of American history and the landscape, came out in late 2020, and eared write-ups in Outside, Frommers, USA Today, Afar, Prior Club, BookPage, and Forbes. People magazine included it in its list of the best coffee table books of 2020. Bart Smith took the photos, and Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan wrote the foreword.
June, 2020. My essay in the Saturday Evening Post on having surgery for thyroid cancer at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic describes the weird new normal — and the gratitude I felt as everyone I encountered made the best of a world that had changed overnight.
2019: Not exactly news anymore, but this is one of my favorites.. National Parks at 100 was the March/April 2016 cover story for the Saturday Evening Post. It won silver in the 2017 Society of American Travel Writers (Eastern Chapter) writing contest.
June, 2018: My book, Great Hiking Trails of the World (Rizzoli, 2017) made it into the New York Times Book Review, USA Today, the AP, and People magazine — and won gold in Foreword Magazine‘s 2017 Indie Book Awards in the nature category.
BucketTripper.com
This travel website features adventures around the world with a focus on adventure, eco-tourism, independent travel, historic sites, and building bridges and understanding between different cultures.
Music News
2025 was a busy year. Along with David Hodge, I played a fair number of local gigs, mostly on hammered dulcimer and cello. We especially enjoyed playing for the Berkshire Busk summer music festival. I maintain a rewarding studio of piano students. For my music journalism, check out KarenBergerPiano.com
Etc.
In the sidebar you’ll find strategies and recipes for the keto way of eating. The strategies are here because so many people have asked me about my weight loss; the recipes are here because they are really really good and I am going to want to find them again some day.