2015 Washburn Award Recipient

Michael Pollan is the author of the bestsellers Cooked, Food Rules, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, among other books. He is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

For the past twenty-five years, Pollan has been writing about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment.

Pollan was named to the 2010 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2009 he was named by Newsweek as one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders.” A contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, his writing has received numerous awards. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received both the President’s Citation Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the Voices of Nature Award from the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2009. 

Born in 1955, Pollan grew up on Long Island and was educated at Bennington College, Oxford University, and Columbia University, from which he received a Master’s in English. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer, and their son, Isaac.