Mary Kay Ricks (right),  a freelance writer,  tour guide, and happily recovering lawyer, began Tour DC in 1996, and hasn't stopped walking since.  In 1998, Ricks wrote a comprehensive article on the 1848 attempted slave escape involving 77 Washington area slaves on the schooner named the Pearl.   Click here for online article - "Escape on the Pearl."  In February of 2002, she detailed the lives of the two Edmonson sister who were on that escape and their amazing journey from a New Orleans slavepen to Oberlin College.   Click here for the story from the Washington Post Magazine.  She recently provided the research for the special commemorative December 8, 2002 issue of the magazine on what Washington was like in 1877, the year the Post began.  She also helps narrative Richard Paul's documentary on the Pearl produced for  public radio station WAMU-FM.  Listen (with Real Audio) at Richard Paul Productions. Three years ago, Ricks conceived and organized Washington's first multi-neighborhood "Beyond the Monuments Tour Day," for the D.C. Heritage Tourism Coalition.    Nearly 700 people took walking tours in Washington, D.C. that day.  1,000 people took one of our walks last spring alone!   Ricks also has written and directed Living History events, and frequently lectures on Washington history.

Meet two more Washington writers who have become associates at Tour DC!  Details below.....

On the cover of the Washington Post's Weekend Section

Jeanne Fogle has been leading walking tours in Washington, D.C. since 1984.  She is a certified Master Tour Guide and lecturer, and always offers an unusual and personal look into Washington’s past and present.  Ms. Fogle serves as an adjunct professor of Washington History and Regional Tour Guiding and Tour Managing at Northern Virginia Community College. She is the author of Two Hundred Years, Stories of the Nation’s Capital and Proximity to Power and Neighbors to the Presidents near Lafayette Square.

 
 
 

Jan Pottker is author of the well-reviewed Jackie  and Janet: The Story of a Mother and Her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  St. Martin's Press. She is also the author of six previous books, including Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren and Celebrity Washington.  Pottker received a Ph.D. from Columbia University and specializes in Georgetown walking tours.

In Georgetown

 

"Your walk was the favorite part of our visit to Washington!"  New York Botanical Garden Club

“[She] managed to tie the whole thing together - the buildings, the personalities, the issues that resonate now as then….” The Washington Post