Diane Daniel is a North Carolina-based freelance journalist who writes about the environment, travel, artisans, and activists. In the travel realm, she advocates for what she calls preservation travel -- travel that preserves cultures and community, history, buildings, and the environment. She blogs about travel and more at www.placeswegopeoplewesee.com.

Diane's travel guidebook "Farm Fresh North Carolina," the first statewide farm-travel book in the country, was published in 2011 by UNC Press. She writes about related topics at www.farmfreshnorthcarolina.com.

Also in 2011, after a family member transitioned from male to female, Diane started to write about transgender issues in print and at  www.shewasthemanofmydreams.com. In 2012, she was awarded an Emerging Artists Grant from the Durham Arts Council to assist with a transgender-themed book.

Diane writes for newspapers and magazines, most frequently The Boston Globe (her last office job), the News & Observer (NC), the Washington Post, and Southern Living magazine. Her work also has run in the New York Times, OnEarth, National Geographic Traveler, Budget Travel, and other national publications.

She contributed to the books "27 Views of Durham," Eno Publishers, 2012; "Checking In 2007: Places to Stay in New England," Boston Globe, 2006; and "The New York Times Practical Guide to Practically Everything," St. Martin's Press, 2006. Diane occasionally leads workshops in travel writing and advocacy writing, with a focus on getting published.

In 2008, Diane won a national Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for her New York Times story on regional home exchanges. In 2012, she won the Personal Essay category in the American Society of Journalists and Authors Awards for  “Once, a Husband,” published in the New York Times.