Eliza Hewitt

Eliza Hewitt grew up in a small steel factory and coal mining town in Pennsylvania. She was a teenager in the tumultuous 1960s and caught up in the labor strife of the 1970s. Upon graduating from college with a bachelor's degree in Journalism and Political Science, she began a long and varied work career which took her to cities and towns, large and small across the United States. She was a public radio d.j. in a border town, alternately co-hosting a big band swing show and a jazz show where she read Spanish poetry to Juarez and El Paso; she taught business law to graduate and undergraduate students at UTEP; she negotiated satellite telecommunication and major missile system contracts for the Defense Department in California and Alabama, respectively; she negotiated and administered the contracts for an environmental engineering firm headquartered in Los Angeles; she ran her own general civil law practice for nearly fifteen years, and was in-house counsel for a fast IT startup in Austin. After her husband suddenly died and she had four children to raise, three still very young, she substitute taught both mainstream and special ed students from kindergarten through high school in the school system her children attended. She was the concierge and historian at a local luxury resort. She managed the community library of a small town in Virginia. She ran a 200 unit luxury apartment community on the water near St. Pete Beach for almost five years, throwing parties that are still talked about. She farms organically and canned and froze her harvest for the family's winter store. She is an herbalist and treated her children's illnesses naturally. While the children were in school she planted 1700 wine grapes, primarily vitis vinifera on her farm which the deer ate. Still, her favorite job of all was her first at a story book park as Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White on alternate days. She loves dancing at art and music festivals, opera, theater, reading and traveling. Her varied experiences have created a colorful palette from which to draw. Her first novel, Renting the Veil, has been hailed as a compelling and beautiful story of love, loss and awakening in swiftly changing times. She woke up one morning and realized that for the first time in memory she had no fires to put out on the family front and left her corporate job in Florida to backpack solo across Europe. She was on the road for four months. She returned to her log cabin in the mountains of Virginia to replenish the coffers, taking a job as a vocational counselor for intellectually disabled adults. Although it was vastly rewarding, the urge to explore the world only grew, so she decided to only take on short-term projects, legal and business and whatever else came by that sparked her interest and allowed her to travel, both within America, where she embarked on an insatiable quest to visit as many national parks and earn as many Junior Ranger pins as she could, and abroad. She worked as the concierge at Bryce Canyon National Park for a season and at a campground in the Everglades National Park two seasons. She worked two summers at a garden center as a plant specialist because she enjoyed being surrounded by plants. She earned her certification in teaching English as a Second Language and taught Chinese children online until the Chinese government shut that down. She is certified as an Egyptian Sekham-Seichem Reiki Master, as well as a Hypnotherapist. She presently volunteers as an ESL instructor for the local Refugee Resettlement Center, teaches American children online and continues to write. She is on the editorial team for an environmental blog, Greentumble where she is the point person for biodiversity matters. Her most recent book, Cloud Eight is an adventure of a refugee on the run and includes a blueprint for kickstarting a green economy which could effectively halt global warming and reward participating entrepreneurs with an insanely comfortable future. A must read. In between she wrote the first two books of an adventure series, Oliver's Travels, tales of a twenty to thirty-something young man traveling the world on a shoestring budget. These are a veritable goldmine for solo travelers who want to live life to its fullest as they are rife with ideas for getting the most out of everything and living like royalty without the trappings. Oliver's adventures are both hilarious and touching. Eliza's goal is to do and see as many different things as possible. Check out her blog at Tinydancer for her travel insights, farm videos, street art and, well, just fun diversions! Follow her on instagram or facebook at eliza hewitt_author. The photo is Eliza and some random guy at a festival.