Introduction: Dedicating fifteen years to a career in the hospitality industry, Barbie Perkins-Cooper is a talented, award-winning writer of screenplays, non-fiction, travel, food, business, and technical writing. Writing has been her passion since an early age of elementary school. Attending a travel writers workshop in 2004, she decided to target travel publications, specializing in hospitality, food and wine, luxury hotels, and travel guides. She has published numerous articles for regional, trade, health and beauty and travel publications. Recognizing her love for culinary and hospitality, she started a pursuit into travel writing when her career in hospitality education was downsized in June 2005. In August 2006, she attended the prestigious Travel Media Showcase, held in Fayetteville, NC. Travel Media Showcase provides a qualified selection of travel journalists the opportunity to meet with domestic and International travel representatives.
Ms. Perkins-Cooper is intrigued by the unique characters she meets while traveling. Her stories and photographs target the flavors of food and wine, hospitality, adventure, theater, and the many fascinating events that take place on her journeys. Recent travel articles include stories in Texas Co-op Power, Buick B Magazine, Reunions, Blue Ridge Country, Hair and Beauty Magazine, Southern Hospitality, and she is the editor for Mail Call with a local VFW. She freelances assignments for regional, trade, and national publications, and is a correspondent for Northstar Travel Media, publishing three travel guides in 2006 [Charleston, SC, Myrtle Beach, SC, and Daytona Beach, FL]. Ms. Perkins-Cooper began her writing career as a child, publishing a science fiction story during third grade in Atlanta, Georgia. Additional areas of writing expertise include marketing for radio and television, fiction, non-fiction, articles, plays and screenplays. In 2001, she published a complex memoir based on her fathers battle with esophageal cancer. The non-fiction memoir is titled, Condition of Limbo. She is the author of Career Diary of a Photographer and she works as a freelance photojournalist.
As a writer of accomplishment, she works diligently to achieve her goals as a professional travel writer, photographer, screenwriter and playwright. Entering the Americas Best competition, she placed as a finalist in the teleplay category with her screenplay, the Commish...The Signature Rapist. Another screenplay, Child of Darkness, placed in the top 10 percent at the 1994 Austin Heart of Film festival. Additional screenplays were selected as finalists for the Chesterfield Writers Film Project and the Goldie Film Awards, Fade In competition, The Writers Network, and Americas Best, The Writers Foundation. In February 2004, she was awarded the Grand Goldie Film Award for her screenplay, Not My Papa.
In her spare time, she likes to kick off her shoes, relax on the beaches of South Carolina, sing, dance, read, travel, and listen to good music, especially blues, jazz, and anything that lights the muse.
