Known for keeping journals as a child and telling funny stories, Stephanie Claytor has spent much of her life writing in her spare time and professionally. The Central Florida resident was born and raised in Twinsburg, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. She went on to graduate from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications summa cum laude, with honors. While attending college, she majored in Broadcast Journalism, International Relations with a geographic concentration on Latin America, and Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture. About a fourth of her studies focused on the Afro-Latino population. After studying abroad in the Dominican Republic during college, she earned a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship and was stationed in Bogota, Colombia.
When she returned home, Stephanie went on to pursue her dream job of becoming a television reporter and multimedia journalist, covering stories in states across the South and Midwest, including in New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, and Florida. Her talents as a videographer, writer and video editor led to her becoming a Florida Associated Press Broadcasters award-winning Multi-Media Reporter. While she thrived in her broadcasting career, Stephanie still felt a desire to sit down and write her first book about her time living abroad and everything she experienced that shaped much of the rest of her life.
In the process of writing and editing this book, she created the travel and lifestyle blog, www.blacktrekking.com. Through the blog, she details her travels around the world, and offers travelers tips to make their trips more enjoyable. So far, she’s visited numerous countries, including Japan, Ghana, and France, and three territories including Bora Bora, Puerto Rico, and Turks and Caicos.