SEJ Member Spotlight: Wendee Holtcamp

Houston-based freelance writer and photographer Wendee Holtcamp has covered conservation, adventure travel, environmental issues and science for magazines and websites since 1997, and her work has taken her to the far reaches of the globe. As a young girl, she drooled over National Geographic magazines hoping one day she would visit the places photographed in their pages. And she has done just that. She trekked through eastern Nepal in search of endangered red pandas to write for National Wildlife magazine, took a carbon-neutral cruise in the Galapagos Islands to write a travel piece for E/The Environmental Magazine, dove with sharks in Australia's Coral Sea while blogging live for Discovery Channel's Shark Week, and spent a month on an oceanographic research vessel in the cold, rainy Bering Sea while reporting a feature for Nature. She has also written for Scientific American, Audubon, Smithsonian, Sierra, BioScience, Environmental Health Perspectives, and other magazines and her photos have accompanied many of her stories. She was Animal Planet's blogger for two years, and wrote regularly for Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine.

Wendee started writing when her two kids were still ankle-biters, and she had just graduated with a Master's degree in Wildlife Ecology. Without a journalism or English background, she crafted her career from scratch just when the interwebs were being invented by Al Gore. Starting out, she devoured library books that explained how to build a freelance career — and also became an SEJ member. Within a year, she was published in national magazines and then sent to Costa Rica by Discovery Channel to report for two weeks on leatherback sea turtle research — a dream assignment. She has no intention of quitting, at least until she wins a Pulitzer. Or decides to become a grizzly-bear wrangler. For the past several years, Wendee has taught an online writing class geared at teaching aspiring and established writers alike 'tricks of the trade' which she learned from hard experience — everything from improving one's writing through observation journaling to crafting killer queries to the business end of building a successful and lucrative freelance career. The next class starts June 2, 2012, though they are taught regularly throughout the year. She is a big fan of SEJ and their incredible annual conferences, the helpful listservs, and mostly, the amazing members and staff who are always kind and generous.