Michael Pollan

Background

For more than 30 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: On our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them, including How to Change Your Mind, were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers. He also hosts a Netflix four-part documentary, “How to Change Your Mind.” A few of his other books include Cooked (2013), Food Rules (2009), In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008), and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), which was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. In 2021, he published a book titled This Is Your Mind on Plants.

Pollan’s essays have appeared in many anthologies, including Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. In addition to publishing regularly in The New York Times magazine, his articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s (where he served for many years as executive editor), Mother Jones, Gourmet, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Gardens Illustrated, The Nation, and The New York Review of Books.

In 2003, Pollan was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In 2017, he was appointed Professor of the Practice of Non-fiction at Harvard and the university’s first Lewis Chan Lecturer in the Arts. In 2020, along with Dacher Keltner and others, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. In 2010, he was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world.

Pollan, who was born in 1955, grew up on Long Island, and was educated at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University, from which he received a master’s in English. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer.

Thanks to our 2023 event sponsors Melanie Gray and Mark Wawro, and Lisa Gray.

Thanks to 2011 sponsors The Inn at Dos Brisas, Georgia’s Farm to Market, Garland Kerr and Jim Blackburn, Organic Horticulture Benefits Alliance, San Jacinto Environmental Supplies, and Catherine Walsh MD.