Author

Alison Abbott

Alison Abbott is a freelance writer and digital influencer living in Boston. With a focus on sustainable travel, she provides authentic destination information, reviews and travel tips. Alison specializes in small ship cruises, luxury, food and wine and responsible adventure travel. She is the founder and editor behind the website Green With Renvy and a local expert for AFAR Media.

Anne Kalosh

Anne Kalosh has written about cruises for decades and her favorites involve small ships. She is the editor of Seatrade-Cruise.com and senior associate editor of Seatrade Cruise Review.

Ben Lyons

Ben Lyons has been obsessed with ships since he was five years old. Since then, he has spent almost every waking moment figuring out how to spend more time at sea.

Charlie and Sherrie Funk

Charlie & Sherrie Funk ran Just Cruisin’ Plus for 40 years. It all started when Sherrie Funk started the first cruise-only travel agency in Tennessee in 1988. Her husband, Charlie Funk, joined her full-time in 1993. Today, they are nationally known trainers and speakers sharing their travel tips and insights, and were named to the Cruise Line International Association Hall of Fame in 2012. Today they operate CSF Travel Consulting.

Chris Richardson

Dana Freeman

Dana Freeman is a Vermont-based freelance travel writer focusing on luxury small-ship cruises. Her smallest voyage to date was on a Barge in France with only six passengers. She is a regular feature writer for ClubLife Magazine. Her work also appears in CNN Travel, Porthole Magazine, Thrillist, Forbes Travel Guide, and others.

David Cogswell

David Cogswell is a freelance writer based in Hoboken, New Jersey, whose articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Fox News, Luxury Travel magazine, Travel Weekly, Travel Market Report, TravelPulse.com and other publications. He is the author of four books and a contributor to others.

Elysa Leonard

Elysa Leonard is a scuba diver who sure knows her tropical fish — she can identify more than 100 kinds. Writing about diving and snorkeling while on a small-ship cruise is her new nirvana.

Gene Sloan

Gene Sloan has written about travel for nearly three decades, with a longtime focus on cruising. He spent more than 20 years as a travel writer and editor at USA TODAY, where he co-founded the paper’s travel section and later founded and ran its online cruise site. At last count, he’d sailed on nearly 150 ships. Follow Gene on Twitter at CruiseLog & Instagram!

Heidi Sarna

I've cruised on 100+ ships of all shapes and sizes all over the world, and it's the small quirky ones that I have always loved the most. My first small-ship cruises in Alaska, the Caribbean and southeast Asia got me hooked and so QuirkyCruise.com was born!

Jackie Sheckler Finch

Jackie Sheckler Finch wrote her first cruise story in 1976 aboard the inaugural voyage of the Mississippi Queen. She has been writing about cruises ever since. Jackie also has been a newspaper reporter in Ohio, Massachusetts and Indiana since 1978 and has been writing for The Herald-Times in her Hoosier hometown of Bloomington since 1989. Sharing her love of travel, she has written 25 travel guidebooks for Globe Pequot Press. A member of The Society of American Travel Writers and Midwest Travel Journalists Association, Jackie has been named the MTJA Mark Twain Travel Writer of the Year a record six times, most recently in 2023. One of her greatest joys is boarding a ship to discover what lies around the next river bend or beyond the ocean horizon.

John Roberts

John Roberts is a freelance writer and operator of InTheLoopTravel.com. He writes about cruising and active travel, and is QuirkyCruise's resident small-ship cruising fitness reporter!

Judi Cohen

Judi Cohen is a Toronto-based freelance writer and social media influencer. Judi fell in love with cruising over 45 years ago on her honeymoon and is passionate about sharing stories about small ship cruising in polar regions and off-beat destinations. She is the founder of the website TravelingJudi.com. She also writes about her travels to over 95 countries for Bold, Zoomer, World Traveler Magazine, All Things Cruise, Travel Market Report, Baxter Media, and more.

Judi Cuervo

Judi Cuervo is a New York City native who fell in love with cruising in 1976 during her first sailing aboard Carnival Cruises’ Mardi Gras. Twenty years later, she began her freelance cruise writing gig and, since that time, has covered mass market, ultra-premium, riverboat and expedition ships for regional, national and international publications as well as cruise websites.

Karl Zimmermann

Karl Zimmermann has written about ships, trains, and other travel subjects for newspapers across the country, from the New York Times and Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times, and for numerous magazines — hundreds of articles in all, to go with his 24 books.

Kathy Rodeghier

Katherine Rodeghier has traveled to nearly 100 countries and cruised across the globe with stops in all seven continents. She’s had close encounters with penguins in Antarctica and tortoises in the Galapagos Islands, joined a King crab safari in Norway, bicycled along a canal on a barge cruise in France, cruised to Casablanca on a vintage sailing ship, and sipped spiced wine at Christmas markets on a cruise on the Danube. Her travel journalism career began in suburban Chicago writing and editing an award-winning newspaper travel section for the Daily Herald. She’s a long-standing member of the Society of American Travel Writers.

Lynn-Cele Seldon

Seldon Ink is the travel journalist team of Lynn and Cele Seldon. Lynn brings their travels to life in words and pictures, while Cele, after a corporate marketing career, writes, edits, shoots, and handles marketing and research. In their 25-year career, they have taken 100+ cruises and have written for more than 200 publications, including Cruise Travel, CruiseCritic, and others. Follow them @Seldon Ink on Twitter & Instagram.

Mike Shaw

Peter Knego

Peter Knego is a cruise journalist, as well as a historian and collector of ocean liner fittings and art (see his www.midshipcentury.com). He writes for top cruise and travel pubs, including USA Today, Travel Weekly and Ships Monthly, and has been interviewed and quoted as an expert in The New York Times, SeaTrade Insider and others.

QuirkyCruise

Ted & Heidi are long-time travel writers with a penchant for small ship cruising. Between them they've traveled all over the world aboard hundreds and hundreds of small cruise ships of all kinds, from river boats to expedition vessels and sailing ships.

Robin McKelvie

Robin McKelvie is a Scottish based travel writer and broadcaster specialising in cruises, especially small ships. A native Scot, Robin has been published across five continents in magazines and newspapers including CNN Traveller.

Sandra and John Nowlan

Sandra and John Nowlan, based in the port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, have been active travel and food writers for almost 20 years. They’ve now visited all seven continents, more than 120 countries and enjoyed 77 ocean, river and expedition cruises.

Sarah Greaves Gabbadon

Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon is a Caribbean travel expert, award-winning travel journalist, and on-camera host, who ventures to the beach and beyond to share the diverse cultures and colorful people of the world’s favorite warm-weather destination. Sarah also loves exploring the historic cities and breathtaking natural places of Europe. Follow her adventures on JetSetSarah.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @JetSetSarah.

Sharon Kurtz

Sharon Kurtz is an Austin, Texas based travel writer and passionate world explorer. With a focus on cruising, outdoor adventures, and bucket-list experiences, Sharon’s stories ignite wanderlust and inspire authentic, independent travel.

Theodore Scull

I am happiest near water, over water or better still on a conveyance moving through water. When my brother Sandy and I were deemed old enough, mother took us to Europe by ship.