Katie MacLeod is an award-winning writer from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, currently based in New York City.
As a journalist, her writing covers a wide spectrum of stories from local news to international features, and has been published in BBC Travel, Buzzfeed, AFAR, Roads and Kingdoms, and more. She has appeared as a guest speaker on STV News and BBC Radio 5 Live, and her photography has been published in BBC Travel, Roads and Kingdoms, and Scottish Islands Explorer.
In 2011, Katie founded the award-winning travel blog Stories My Suitcase Could Tell, which was named ‘Best Travel Blog’ by Cosmopolitan Magazine in 2014, and has featured in National Geographic Traveller, Buzzfeed, Wanderlust Magazine, and more. She was listed as one of Scotland’s Top 100 Women in Tourism in 2020, and has been shortlisted for multiple industry awards over the years, including the AITO Awards and Travel Media Awards. Most recently, she was awarded Gold for Travel Blogger of the Year at the 2024 AITO Travel Writer of the Year Awards.
Katie holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, which included a year spent studying Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on an academic scholarship. In 2018 she graduated from the Columbia Publishing Course at the Columbia University School of Journalism.
When she’s not writing, Katie can be found packing her suitcase for the next adventure, getting lost in a good book, or walking her mischievous puppy, Winston.