by Jill Forman
Thirty-five years ago, Ken McAlpine came to Ventura for the surf; he stayed for life. During that time he created a home and became an author. “As a travel writer, I’ve been to some of the most beautiful places in the world, but always I can’t wait to come back to Ventura. I couldn’t have picked a better place.” He blogs weekly for the Facebook page of Visit Ventura about “the joys of travel and life”.
Settling in one place was not his experience. His father was in the Foreign Service; Ken was born in Hong Kong, and lived in the U.S., Laos and Singapore with his family. “A fun experience; I got the travel bug early, as a kid.” Always a beach-lover, he majored in Environmental Science/Coastal Zone Management, studying the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
After college, he took off for Australia and traveled up that coast, surfing and keeping a diary. “I was incredibly naive” he says; he just typed up the diary and sent if off to Surfer Magazine. “It was unpublishable,” but an editor there sent him an encouraging letter. Then he wrote a piece for them, after looking up the guidelines for submissions, on winter surfing in New Jersey, which the magazine bought. “It was so exciting!”
Back in New Jersey, he had fallen in love with Kathy, an elementary school teacher and “the woman of my dreams.” He also dreamed about California’s beaches and she, obviously wise, told him to come here and check it out or he’d always wonder. Once he saw our sunshine, surf and beaches, he was in love yet again. Kathy joined him, and our traveler was home for good. Soon a house and two boys completed the picture.
He has sold shoes and been a lifeguard, but wanted to write so got a job at the VC Reporter writing “…anything and everything…It was a great grooming ground for a writer.” Meanwhile, he sent pieces out to magazines. His break was selling a piece on trail running in Ventura County to Sports Illustrated. “A big deal,” it looked good on his resume. He started getting assignments; “…they used me for quirky stuff, you know, one legged climbers, human interest stories.”
As a free-lancer, he wrote articles, blogs and stories that were published in Sunset, National Geographic Traveler, Auto Club, Men’s Journal, Outside and so on. In 2004, he published his first book, Off Season: Discovering American on Winter’s Shore; which was a Barnes and Noble Great New Writers selection, and led to appearances on NPR.
Islands Apart: A Year on the Edge of Civilization is set partially on the Channel Islands, as a counterpoint to our fast-paced times. Fog is very different, a dark fiction account of the Surf Lifesavers on Cape Cod in the 1880’s, “a modern day Moby Dick.”
Many readers’ favorite McAlpine book is Together We Jump, the story of an 85 year old named Pogue, who goes on a cross-country odyssey to face the ghosts of his troubled life and figure out how to live well in the time he has left.
He also has a trilogy about the ocean with an environmental subtext. And other books, “I am shopping them around.” He doesn’t hide the hard work of being a writer and the discouragement. “It can be soul-crushing”
Why does he write? “It gives me joy, and I hope in some small fashion it will give the readers joy. Life is a gift, I’d like to make them think…I don’t have any answers.” You can read about him at kenmcalpine.com.
