 Photo Credit: Glenn Nakamichi |
David Mas Masumoto is an organic peach and grape farmer and the author of Harvest Son, Planting Roots in American Soil (1998, W.W. Norton) and Epitaph For A Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm (1995, HarperCollins) and Four Seasons in Five Senses, Things Worth Savoring. A third generation farmer, Masumoto (48) grows peaches, grapes and raisins and works with his 80 year old father on their organic 80 acre farm south of Fresno, Calif. Masumoto has written for USA Today, Los Angeles Times and is currently a columnist for The Fresno Bee. 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. 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. Masumoto 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. Related Links: |
