2013 Fellows & Editors
CYNTHIA GRABER, Somerville, Massachusetts @cagraber
Cynthia is a science writer and radio producer and a recent Knight Fellow at MIT. She has written for Scientific American, Smithsonian.com, the Boston Globe, BBC and Slate among others. Her radio work has broadcast on Studio 360, The World, Scientific American, Latino USA, and The Open Notebook podcast.
Cynthia’s fellowship story on the use of probiotics to increase agricultural production was published by PBS’s NovaNext in June 2014. Read her piece, “The Next Green Revolution May Rely on Microbes,” here.
The radio version of story was aired by PRI’s The World on July 2, 2014. Listen here.
A Spanish language version of her piece was published in the Columbian newspaper El Espectador on July 27, 2014. Read it here.
In 2014, Cynthia co-founded Gastropod, a new podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history with fellow Nicola Twilley. Listen to the episode they did about the microbiome of agriculture and probiotics for soil.
LAUREN MARKHAM, Oakland, California @LaurenMarkham_
Lauren is a journalist who reports on immigration and underrepresented communities. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Guernica, Orion, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Vice Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is a Contributing Editor. In addition to writing, she has spent over a decade working at the intersection of immigration and education in the Bay Area. Lauren’s fellowship story about unaccompanied teenagers from Central America harvesting produce in California’s Central Valley was published in VICE Magazine in March 2014. Read her piece, “The Lost Boys of California,” here. She also wrote a story on migrant farmworker families who had been released by ICE, and the drought’s impact on them, in Pacific Standard. Read it here, “Scorched.”
Lauren’s in depth, investigative story in VICE broke months before the issue of unaccompanied minors became major national news on the front pages of every national newspaper and the cause of political fights in Washington. The story was viewed more than 32,000 times online and widely shared on social media. After her VICE story came out, Lauren got a book agent and in May 2015, she sold a book about unaccompanied Central American migrants to Crown. The book, titled The Faraway Brothers, got glowing reviews everywhere, including the New York Times, and was the winner of the Northern California Book Award, the Ridenhour Prize, the California Book Award Silver Medal, and shortlisted for the LA Times Book Prize.
BRIDGET HUBER, France @bridgethuber
Bridget is a print and radio reporter working at the intersections of science, food and public health. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, The American Prospect, GOOD, The Associated Press and other publications. She has a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Bridget’s fellowship story about a pair of lawyers and their lawsuits against industrial pork producers over stink was published in the May/June 2014 issue of Mother Jones. Read her piece “Law and Odor: How to Take Down a Terrible-Smelling Hog Farm,” here.
LISA M. HAMILTON, Marin County, California, @HamiltonLisaM
Lisa focuses her writing and photography on agriculture and rural communities around the world. She is the author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, and her work has also been published in magazines including Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Orion, and California Sunday. Her 2014 article “The Quinoa Quarrel” won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for writing on Food Politics, Policy and the Environment.
Lisa’s fellowship story about open source seeds was published in the summer 2014 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review. Read her piece, “Linux for Lettuce,” here. The article was chosen by Houghton & Mifflin for The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2015.
NICOLA TWILLEY, Los Angeles, California @nicolatwilley
Nicola is co-host of the Gastropod podcast and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.
Nicola’s fellowship story about the refrigeration boom in China was published in the New York Times Magazine on July 25, 2014. Read her piece, “The Price of Cold.” She is now writing a book exploring the global landscape of artificial refrigeration and its transformative effects for Penguin Press, tentatively titled “The Birth of Cool.” Her first book, co-authored with Geoff Manaugh, is titled Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, and will be published in July 2021 by MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Following the fellowship, Nicola co-founded Gastropod, an award-winning and popular podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history with fellow Cynthia Graber.
HEATHER TIRADO GILLIGAN, Oakland, California, @HeatherGilligan
Heather is senior editor at Timeline. She’s recently reported on WIC and nutritional studies for Slate, school lunches for Modern Farmer and other topics for publications including The Nation and Huffington Post. Heather is a graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism.
Heather’s fellowship story on poverty’s effects on people’s health was published by Slate in February 2014. Read her piece, “Food Deserts Aren’t the Problem,” here.
GUEST EDITORS
JACK HITT
Jack Hitt is the creator and co-host of the 2018 Peabody Award-winning podcast, Uncivil as well as a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the public radio program This American Life. He is the author of several books most recently Bunch of Amateurs. His first book Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain was made into a motion picture “The Way” directed by Emilio Estévez and starring Martin Sheen. His Harper’s report on American anthropology was selected for a collection of the best science writing of the past 25 years The Best of the Best of American Science Writing. His one-man show “Making Up the Truth” is a series of his slightly incredible real-life stories woven in with the contemporary brain science that nearly answers the question “Is any of this true?”
ALAN BURDICK
Alan Burdick is an editor for the New York Times Science section and a former senior editor at The New Yorker and a contributing editor for OnEarth, where he writes the Synthesist column about technology and nature. Alan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, GQ, Discover, OnEarth, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and elsewhere. He also has served widely as an editor, including at The New York Times Magazine, Discover, and The Sciences. A former Guggenheim fellow, Alan has received the AAAS Westinghouse prize for magazine feature writing and was a co-recipient of the Olive Branch Award for coverage of international security issues. Alan’s first nonfiction book, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club Award for environmental reporting.
FELLOWSHIP EDITORS
MICHAEL POLLAN
Michael Pollan is the author of seven books, including How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine, he is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. In 2010, Time Magazine named Michael one of the 100 most influential people in the world. @michaelpollan
MALIA WOLLAN
Malia Wollan is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine where she writes the weekly Tip column. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s, National Public Radio, New York Magazine, the Associated Press and PBS’s Frontline/World. She has lectured at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, is a former editor at Meatpaper magazine, and is the director of this fellowship. @mwollan