Confluence Literary Festival

Ann Vileisis is an independent scholar, free-lance writer, and editor.

Her first book, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: a History of America's Wetlands (Island Press, 1997), received prestigious honors from two national history organizations. The American Historical Association-the nation's largest and oldest group of professional historians-granted the book its Herbert Feis Award for the best book written by an independent or public historian. The American Society of Environmental History awarded the book their George Perkins Marsh Prize for the best environmental history book of 1997. Discovering the Unknown Landscape was reviewed widely in magazines, including Smithsonian and Sierra, and in many journals and newspapers.

With Discovering the Unknown Landscape, Ann lectured at conferences and campuses nationwide, spoke on a number of radio shows, and appeared on a public television documentary.

While researching her latest book, Kitchen Literacy, Ann was a short-term fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, and she was a writer-in-residence at Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes, California.

With Kitchen Literacy's publication, Ann did a book tour that took her to many of the finest independent bookstores of the West Coast. She was also guest on several notable radio shows, including West Coast Live, Martha Stewart Living Radio, Thom Hartmann, Dining Around with Gene Burns, Food & Wine Talk, A Chef's Table, and Conversations with Kathleen Dunn.

Ann is also involved local issues of environment and agriculture on the south coast of Oregon. As president of the local Kalmiopsis Audubon Society chapter, she participates in a collaborative effort called the Cape Blanco Challenge, started by a group of local ranchers with the vision of protecting local food-systems and ecosystems-working landscapes and natural landscapes-along the extraordinary Oregon coast. The collaborative group is exploring ways to link local food producers with local markets, to find funding to support restoration of wetlands and riparian areas along key salmon streams, and to fund conservation easements to protect the most sensitive ecological areas.

Ann became interested in history and environmental issues as an undergraduate at Yale University where she earned her B.A. She also has a Master's Degree in history from Utah State University.

Ann is married to author and photographer Tim Palmer. Together they lived for eleven years as nomads, living and traveling in a Ford van as they did their research and writing. In 2003, they moved to the Oregon coast.
For more information, see Ann's website http://web.me.com/avileisis/Kitchen_Literacy/About_Ann_Vileisis.html

David Mas Masumoto is an organic peach and grape farmer and the author of Letters to the Valley, A Harvest of Memories, published by Heyday Books, 2004. His previous books include Four Seasons in Five Senses, Things Worth Savoring (2003, W.W. Norton), Harvest Son, Planting Roots in American Soil (1998, W.W. Norton) and Epitaph For A Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm (1995, HarperCollins).

A third generation farmer, Masumoto (52) grows certified organic peaches, nectarines, grapes and raisins. He works with his family on their organic 80 acre farm south of Fresno, California and also helps care for his parents who still live on the family farm.

Masumoto is currently a columnist for and The Fresno Bee has written for USA Today and The Los Angeles Times. His other books include Silent Strength (1984), Home Bound (1989) and Country Voices, The Oral History of a Japanese American Family Farm Community (1987). He received the James Clavell Japanese American National Literacy Award in 1986.

Epitaph for a Peach won the 1995 Julia Child Cookbook Award in the Literary Food Writing category and was a finalist for the 1996 James Beard Foundation Food Writing Award. It was also received the San Francisco Review of Books Critics' Choice Award 1995-96. A German translation edition of Epitaph for a Peach was published in 1997.
Harvest Son won a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal for the California Book Awards in 1999 and was a finalist for the Asian American Writers' Workshop award in New York.

In 2002, Masumoto was appointed to the James Irvine Foundation Board of Directors. He also serves on the board of the Campaign for College Opportunity. Previously, he was appointed to the California Council for the Humanities board in 1994 and served as Co-Chair from 1998 to 2001. He wrote, designed and curated the museum exhibition, "Country Voices, Three Generations of Family Farmers" which appeared at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum (1992) and the Japanese American National Museum (1993) in Los Angeles. He has a bachelors degree in sociology from U.C. Berkeley and a masters degree in community development from U.C. Davis and attended International University in Tokyo, Japan.

Masumoto has been the key note speaker at many diverse conferences including International Association of Culinary Professionals, Culinary Institute of America, American Association of Museums, American Institute of Wine and Food, Dance USA, Ag. in the Classroom National Conference, Chamber Music Society of America, Calif. Teachers of English and Japanese American National Museum. He also was awarded a Breadloaf Writers Conference fellowship in 1996. He has also visited numerous schools delivering presentations and teaching in classes and was a writer in residence at Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2004.

Feature articles about Masumoto have appeared in Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine and New York Times. His farm has been featured Sunset, Country Living and Glamour Magazines and on television as part of the California Heartland PBS series as well as the nationally aired program "Ripe for Change."
Masumoto won the University of California, Davis "Award of Distinction" from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in 2003. He was a founding member of California Association of Family Farmers. He has served on the California Tree Fruit Agreement research board and has been a member of the Raisin Advisory Committee research board.

Masumoto and his wife, Marcy Masumoto, EdD., (50), have two children, Nikiko (20) and Korio (14). They reside in an 90 year old farmhouse surrounded by their vineyards and orchards just outside of Del Rey, California which is 20 miles south of Fresno.

His website is www.masumoto.com

Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD., is an Arab-American writer, lecturer, food and farming advocate, rural lifeways folklorist, and conservationist whose work has long been rooted in the U.S./Mexico borderlands region he affectionately calls "the stinkin' hot desert." He recently accepted a tenured professorship as a Research Social Scientist based at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona--- his alma mater.

He teaches in Geography, as well as interacts with faculty and graduate students engaged in creative writing and reconcilation ecology research. He continues advising or consulting with many non-profits--including the Renewing America's Food Traditions collaborative - although he will no longer serve as administrator or principal investigator on any grant-funded research or community development projects in order to devote more time to creative writing and field work.

For his literary non-fiction, grassroots conservation and community-based ethnobiology projects, Nabhan has been honored with the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a MacArthur "genius" award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Pew Fellowship in Conservation and Environment, a Lifetime Acheivement Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, and a Quivira Coalition award for excellence in science that contributes to "the radical center." Nabhan's books have been translated in five languages, and he has lectured at universities in Mexico, Lebanon, Peru, Oman, Guatemala, and Italy, including Slow Food's University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo.

When not gardening, caring for heitage breeds of sheep and turkeys, or hiking with his dogs, he is active in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans, the Orion Society
and the local foods movement.

Please see his website www.garynabhan.com

I'm trained as a field ecologist, and studying the interrelationships between the species that form the community of the land will always be a passion. But over the years while I mapped grizzly bear habitat, wildfire patterns and sagebrush communities, I came to realize I loved telling the stories behind the data more than collecting those data.

I'm the author of eleven books that explore the interrelationships that form what Aldo Leopold called the "community of the land." My work has appeared in magazines and newspapers from Audubon and Popular Mechanics to High Country News and the Los Angeles Times - and has been heard on the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network.
I've taught workshops at colleges, universities, and writing festivals from University of California-Riverside and Miami University of Ohio to Wofford College in South Carolina, as well as at home and online. Audiences as diverse as the International Xeriscape Conference, Collegiate Peaks Forum, Monte Vista Crane Festival, and the Walking Words Writing Festival have called my talks "inspiring" and "insightful." I coach individual writers, review manuscripts for university presses, and contribute to "The Perch," the blog of Audubon magazine, and Story Circle Network's "HerStories" as well as my own blog.

I'm a Quaker, a step-mother, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a mentor & mentee, and a friend. I belong to an informal network of writers and artists who speak for the land, and to Story Circle Network, Women Writing the West, and Colorado Author's League.
I'm a passionate gardener who grows my own vegetables, fruits and herbs, and also enjoys the challenge of native plant restoration and "wildscape" design.

http://www.susanjtweit.com/Susansite/Home.html

Being something of a farm kid (I was raised on a dairy farm and in an ag-university by a botanist father), I've long had an interest in plants in general, gardening, and farming. These early experiences have long informed my cooking and writing about food.

When I'm not writing or working in my vegetable garden, I spend time as a Slow Food convivium co-leader. I have also served on Slow Food's Ark and Presidia Committee and as a board member of the Slow Food Foundation for Bio-Diversity. I am also on the board of the Seed Savers Exchange and The Southwest Grassfed Livestock Association. In my community I am involved with a school garden project and our local farmers market.

As a freelance writer I currently write for culinate.com and gourmet.com, and have contributed to Cooking Light, Williams Sonoma's Taste, Vegetarian Times, Gourmet, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Garden Design, Fine Cooking, Organic Style, The LA Times, Orion, and others.

2009:

Jack Loeffler, Lore of the Land Board Member, is a bioregional aural historian, producer, writer, sound collage artist, and musician. Since 1964, he has conducted field recordings west of the 100th meridian, founding the Peregrine Arts Sound Archive in 1967 to be the repository for his professional work. His archive now holds thousands of hours of recordings of interviews, music and natural habitat, and contains well over 3,000 songs of indigenous and traditional peoples. His primary concern is restoration and preservation of habitat focusing on the relationships of indigenous cultures to respective habitats, and the role of cultural diversity in attempting to solve the dilemmas now facing humankind.
Loeffler has produced over 300 documentary programs for radio, plus scores of soundtracks, albums of music from diverse genres, films, videos, folk music festivals, museum sound collages, and books. Selected radio series include: La Musica de los Viejitos; Southwest Sound Collage; Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute; Bioregional Folklore and Music of Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, Anglo, and Mexican Folk Musicians; Moving Waters - The Colorado River and the West; and The Lore of the Land.
He has authored five books: Headed Upstream: Interviews with Iconoclasts, 1989; La Musica de los Viejitos including 3-CD set, with Katherine Loeffler and Enrique Lamadrid, 1999; Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey, 2002; Survival Along the Continental Divide, 2008; and Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat, 2008. He is currently working on several projects, including the Thinking Like a Watershed aural history project.
He is the recipient of a 2008 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the 2009 Edgar Lee Hewett Award for Outstanding Public Service from the New Mexico Historical Society.

2008:

In the course of a twenty-year friendship Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler shared hundreds of campfires, hiked thousands of miles, and talked endlessly about the meaning of life. To read Loeffler's account of his best pal's life and work is to join in their friendship.

"Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler were like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Loeffler delivers his friend, warts and all on a platter full of reverence and irreverence and carefully researched factual information, interspersed with hearty laughter and much serious consideration of all life's Great Questions. Jack's story elucidates and demythifies the Abbey legend, giving us powerful flesh and blood instead." John Nichols

In the spring of 2008, Survival Along the Continental Divide by Jack Loeffler will be released by the University of New Mexico Press. In the autumn, Jacks latest book, Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat will be released by the Museum of New Mexico Press. His latest radio series, The Lore of the Landhas recently been made available via the NPR satellite and Public Radio Exchange. Jack Loeffler is a writer, ethnographer, researcher, and radio correspondent.