Joan M. Scobey

Ms. Scobey (nee Joan Moisseiff) had the cosmopolitanism of a native New Yorker. After graduating from Smith College in 1948, she spent two years in Paris as a stringer for the International Herald Tribune, the start of a lifelong career as a freelance writer and journalist. It was over a business lunch at the Russian Tea Room, pitching an idea about radio plays for children, that she met Raphael Scobey, an entertainment lawyer; they married a year later. While raising their sons David and Richard in Westchester County, she co-authored Creative Careers for Women: A Handbook of Sources and Ideas for Part-time Jobs and a series of craft and cook books. She published two humorous memoirs: Short Rations: Confessions of a Cranky Calorie-Counter and I’m a Stranger Here Myself: The Panic (and Pleasures) of Middle Age.

After her husband’s death in 1989, Ms. Scobey returned to Manhattan and began a long career as a freelance travel and food writer. There was hardly a corner of the earth--Greenland, China, Cape Town, Peru--that she didn't visit on assignment. She was active in the Society of American Travel Writers, co-chairing its international convention in 1998. “Her writing was punchy, witty, incisive, spare,” her SATW colleague Geoffrey Weil commented. “She was able to describe places with perfect clarity and vision.”

Joan Scobey is survived by her son Richard and son-in-law Bruce Ragsdale of Cambridge, United Kingdom; her son David and daughter-in-law Denise Thal of Ann Arbor, Michigan; her grandson Jake Scobey-Thal, granddaughter-in-law Al Page, and great-granddaughter Frieda Page of New Orleans; her grandson Rafe Scobey-Thal of Paris, France; and her grandson Isaac Scobey-Thal of Brooklyn. A private memorial service is being planned.