Rowan Jacobsen

Rowan is the author of A Geography of Oysters, Fruitless Fall, The Living Shore, American Terroir, Shadows on the Gulf, Apples of Uncommon Character, and The Essential Oyster. He writes for Harper’s, Outside, Mother Jones, Vice, Scientific American, Yankee, Orion, Food & Wine, and others, and his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science & Nature Writing and Best Food Writing collections. He has won a couple of James Beard Awards. His Outside Magazine piece “Heart of Dark Chocolate” received the Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers for best adventure story of the year, and his Harper’s piece “The Homeless Herd” was named best magazine piece of the year by the Overseas Press Club. Apples of Uncommon Character was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, NPR, and others. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, writing about endangered diversity on the borderlands between India, Myanmar, and China; a McGraw Center for Business Journalism Fellow, writing about the disruptive potential of plant-based proteins; and a 2017-18 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, focusing on the environmental and evolutionary impact of synthetic biology. He has performed with Pop-Up Magazine, lectured at The Explorer’s Club and Harvard University, and ghostwritten books he can’t ever tell you about. He lives in Vermont.