Even though Zora O'Neill has lived in New York City since 1998, she still calls New Mexico home. Growing up, she spent some Christmases in the adobe house of the governor of Taos Pueblo, while summers were spent hiking and camping in the Pecos Mountains and the state's other beautiful wilderness areas.

Since a sixth-grade jaunt to London, Zora has been interested in seeing the world. College and graduate school took her to Cairo for advanced Arabic study, as well as to Lebanon, Syria, and Morocco. Also on her varied itinerary over the past decade were Spain, Cuba, Greece, Mexico, London, and several extended stays in Amsterdam for work. The more Zora travels, the more she appreciates how fascinating, wild, and culturally rich her native home of New Mexico is.

All along in her travels, Zora has been particularly interested in food, even working part-time in New York City restaurant kitchens and running a small catering operation. Working on Moon Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque gave her the excuse to seek out the best red chile enchiladas in the state as well as the most creative uses of local organic produce and meat. Zora is also the author of Moon New Mexico. She maintains a blog about her dining, travel, and guidebook-research experiences at www.rovinggastronome.com, as well as www.moonsantafe.com, where you can see what’s changed since this book’s publication. She welcomes email from readers at zora [at] rovinggastronome [dot] com.