Berkeley Arts & Letters presents:

 NOVELLA CARPENTER in conversation with MICHAEL POLLAN

Urban and rural collide in this wry, inspiring memoir of a woman who turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a thriving farm. Novella Carpenter loves cities—the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can’t shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents’ disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a twenty-four-hour convenience mart mere minutes away. Especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, ducks, rabbits and pigs. 
Farm City is a moving meditation on urban life versus the natural world and what we have given up to live the way we do. Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She majored in biology and English at the University of Washington in Seattle. While attending Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, she studied under Michael Pollan for two years. Her writing has appeared on Salon.com, Saveur.com, sfgate.com, and in Mother Jones.

Michael Pollan is, of course, the author of the phenomenally successful and essential books The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, among others. He teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

This is a KPFA supported event