Author David Mas Masumoto to Replace Richard Preston in First Wallace Stegner Lecture on Feb. 8
February 3, 2010
Due to injuries sustained in a skiing accident, author Richard Preston will be unable to speak at the opening lecture of the annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). Preston was scheduled to open the series with an illustrated talk about his book The Wild Trees. In his place, award-winning author and organic farmer David Mas Masumoto will appear. The lecture takes place on Monday, February 8, at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts at 8:00 p.m. The author will answer audience questions and sign books at a reception afterward.
Third-generation farmer Masumoto grows organic peaches, nectarines and grapes on his 80-acre family farm south of Fresno, Calif. Hailed by The New York Times as “a poet of farming,” he weaves together stories of family and life on the land to reveal age-old truths that are fast-disappearing.
Masumoto’s latest book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land, was honored as “Best Environmental Writing in 2009” by the National Resources Defense Council. His other books include Four Seasons in Five Senses: Things Worth Savoring; Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil; and Epitaph For A Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm, which won the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award for the literary food writing category. He has also received the Commonwealth Club Silver Medal and the James Clavell Literacy Award and was named a finalist in the James Beard Foundation awards. He has written for USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and is currently a columnist for the Fresno Bee. He is a board member of the James Irvine Foundation and the Public Policy Institute of California and has served as chair of the California Council for the Humanities. His farm has been featured in Sunset and Country Living magazines and in the PBS series California Heartland.
POST’s lecture series is named in honor of the late Wallace Stegner—Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Stanford University professor and ardent protector of the West’s wild lands and open spaces. Designed to educate and inspire, the lectures explore themes related to land, nature and conservation.
For the past 17 years, Ambassador Bill and Mrs. Jean Lane have generously sponsored POST’s annual lecture series. Support also comes from media sponsor Embarcadero Publishing (Palo Alto Weekly, Mountain View Voice, The Almanac, Palo Alto Online) and lecture sponsorsNoble and Lorraine Hancock and Jobst Brandt, Sand Hill Advisors and the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation.
The series continues with acclaimed novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux on March 1 and green technology venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, in conversation with KQED radio host Michael Krasny, on April 26. All lectures begin at 8 p.m.