About

For more than two decades, freelance writer and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton has documented agriculture and rural communities around the world. Her focus is on individual people’s struggles for power and resilience within a global food system.

She is the author of “The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival” and “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.” Her articles have been published in The New York Times, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, California Sunday and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She has also performed her work, at events ranging from the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, to Pop-Up Magazine at San Francisco’s Symphony Hall.

In 2019, Lisa was a National Fellow with New America, and in 2013, the inaugural visiting scholar with the California Historical Society’s program “Curating California.” She has received additional fellowships and grants from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, Alicia Patterson Foundation, and the Creative Work Fund of the Haas Foundation. Her 2014 article “The Quinoa Quarrel” won the James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for writing on Food Politics, Policy and the Environment. She lives in Northern California.

** Lisa is currently working to have “The Hungry Season” translated and recorded as an audiobook in Hmong. To learn more, or to contribute to this effort, please use the contact form below. **