2014 Fellows & Editors

SIERRA CRANE-MURDOCH Hood River, Oregon @SierraMurdoch

DAVID FERRY, London, England  @ferryin280

David is a freelance reporter. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Wired and This American Life, among other outlets. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

David’s fellowship story “The Promises and Perils of Synthetic Biology” appeared in Newsweek in March 2015.

DANIEL FROMSON, Brooklyn, New York @dfroms

Dan is a staff editor at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Finding Shakespeare, published by The Atavist Magazine. A former editor at The New Yorker and The Atlantic, where he edited the website’s food coverage, he has also written for The Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and Slate.

Dan’s story, “The Silicon Valley Race to Build a Fake-Meat Burger That Just Might Save the World” appeared in the June 2015 issue of New York Magazine.

FERRIS JABR, Portland, Oregon @ferrisjabr

Ferris is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. He’s also written for The New Yorker.com, Outside, Wired, Popular Mechanics, MinuteEarth, The Awl, Nautilus and NOVA Next. Some of his work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He is writing a book about the coevolution of Earth and life for Random House.

Ferris’s fellowship story “Reinventing the Potato” appeared in Modern Farmer. His story “Fruits and Vegetables Are About to Enter a Flavor Renaissance” can be found at Pacific Standard.

REBECCA KANTHOR, Shanghai, China, @RebeccaKanthor

Casey Miner is an independent public radio producer. Most recently she was senior editor for the award-winning news, arts, and culture program Crosscurrents on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco; she’s also contributed work to NPR, KQED, Marketplace, Mother Jones, The Takeaway, and Transportation Nation. She holds a Master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and she has the distinction of having profiled the Bay Area’s only kayak commuter.

Casey’s story, “How LA’s Wild Quinoa Can Help Fight Global Food Shortages” aired on KQED’s the California Report

ERICA MU, Los Angeles, California

Erica is an independent public radio producer and freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Mu’s work covers a broad range of topics across a variety of formats, including magazine features, long-form documentaries, and digital shorts. Before moving to LA, Mu led the Bay Area-based transmedia project Hear Here, one of 10 projects tasked with innovating around interactive journalism. Mu has also reported and produced for San Francisco NPR station KALW.

Erica’s story “Cheap produce and $60,000 bottles of cognac” aired on Marketplace on September 10, 2014.

Erica’s story “For California’s Hmong farmers, options are drying up” aired on KQED’s The California Report on December 6, 2014.

PETER ANDREY SMITH, Brooklyn, New York, @petersm_th

Smith is a reporter who had covered food, science and technology. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Wired, and The Walrus and online at The New Yorker, Smithsonian and Buzzfeed. Peter’s fellowship story, “Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?” was published in the New York Times Magazine on June 23, 2015.

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?”

ALEX BLUMBERG

Alex Blumberg is an award-winning radio journalist and co-founder of Gimlet Media. He was a producer for This American Life and the co-founder of Planet Money.
@abexlumberg

PAUL TOUGH

Paul Tough is the author, most recently, of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, a New York Times best-seller. His first book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, was published in 2008. Paul is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, where he has written extensively about education, parenting, poverty, and politics.His writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Esquire, and Geist, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program “This American Life.” He was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine.
@paultough

DAVIA NELSON

Davia Nelson is a radio producer, and along with Nikki Silva, the founder of The Kitchen Sisters, producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, the two Peabody Award-winning NPR series,Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project and most recently, The Hidden World of Girls, a series on NPR that explored the lives of girls and the women they become. Their current project is The Making Of…, a production with KQED and AIR.

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