A little bit more about me...
My interest in agriculture stems from growing up in Iowa, where agriculture is the dominant element in the landscape, a fundamental part of the local culture and key locus of political debate. At the same time, I grew up in a household dominated by books: my mother was an artisan bookbinder, my stepfather a hand-press printer, and my father a professor of English.
My career has sought to join these two interests by exploring the links between farming and writing, especially as they relate to alternative agriculture movements. After graduating from college with a degree in Literary Studies, I did an internship at The Land Institute in Kansas, Wes Jackson's non-profit research and education organization focused on the development of perennial grain crops. I went on to get my PhD in English at Princeton University, where I wrote a dissertation on 18th-century British agricultural writing. Upon completing my PhD I became a writer and editor for NewFarm.org and The Rodale Institute, the oldest organic farming research and advocacy organization in the United States. From 2008 to 2009 I was managing editor of Edible Jersey, a magazine in the Edible Communities family, while simultaneously holding a fellowship with the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University.
Since the fall of 2009 I have been working for the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, the French National Institute of Agronomic Research, where I am based in Dijon, France. If you'd like to get in touch, my email at INRA follows the format firstname.lastname[at]dijon.inra.fr.
My career has sought to join these two interests by exploring the links between farming and writing, especially as they relate to alternative agriculture movements. After graduating from college with a degree in Literary Studies, I did an internship at The Land Institute in Kansas, Wes Jackson's non-profit research and education organization focused on the development of perennial grain crops. I went on to get my PhD in English at Princeton University, where I wrote a dissertation on 18th-century British agricultural writing. Upon completing my PhD I became a writer and editor for NewFarm.org and The Rodale Institute, the oldest organic farming research and advocacy organization in the United States. From 2008 to 2009 I was managing editor of Edible Jersey, a magazine in the Edible Communities family, while simultaneously holding a fellowship with the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University.
Since the fall of 2009 I have been working for the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, the French National Institute of Agronomic Research, where I am based in Dijon, France. If you'd like to get in touch, my email at INRA follows the format firstname.lastname[at]dijon.inra.fr.
Banner photo by Laura B. Sayre.