A Life of Letters: Conversation with Michael Pollan '76 and Mark Wunderlich

Bestselling author Michael Pollan '76 discusses his books and his craft with students and their families during Fall Weekend. 

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan '76 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 award-winning author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers. Previous books include Cooked (2013), Food Rules (2009), In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008), The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). Pollan is 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. Michael Pollan graduated from Bennington in 1976, and also studied at 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 '78.

Space is limited.