Some folks think that child labor is the greatest evil we face. We don’t want kids making our clothes or farming our chocolate.
Child labor makes headlines; hunger doesn’t.
AllAfrica reports that students in rural Zimbabwe are dropping out of school because they don’t have enough to eat and need to work to earn money to buy food. Young boys are leaving school to work in illegal gold mines.
When you live in a region where 25% of deaths of children under the age of five are related to nutritional deficiencies, food is more important than school.
Before we take a stand against child labor, we need to take a stand against extreme poverty. …
Read More >
I let Conor Grennan’s book Little Princes take my blog hostage a few years ago. Now Conor is coming to Muncie this Tuesday (9/10) to give a public talk at Emens Auditorium at 7:30! And of course, while Conor is on stage at Ball State, a short bike ride from my house, I’ll be on a stage at Marietta College.
Conor is an awesome fella who I’ve come to know through his writings over the past decade. I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting him at a conference we were both attending. If you live anywhere close to Muncie, you should come and laugh at (or with) and be inspired by Conor. I promise you’ll do both.
The details:
Conor Grennan, author of Little Princes, September 10, 7:30 pm …
Read More >
September kicks off a busy fall of corrupting the minds of students across the country. Six schools have selected my books as common reading experiences (4 for WEARING and 2 for EATING). Visiting a university full of students who have read (or were supposed to have read!) your book is about the best experience I’ve had as an author.
This month’s schedule is below. If you are in any of these areas, I’d love for you to attend, or drop me a tweet or Facebook message and maybe we can meet up for coffee.
9/6 Union City, Ohio @ 6:30 PM (open to public)
I’m talking about WHERE AM I EATING? at the EUM church where my mother attended as a child and my in-laws attend today. It…
Read More >
Kyle, either posing like a “scientist” or planning to takeover the world.
My brother, Kyle, always led my earliest adventures into imaginary realms. We fought trolls with wooden swords, goblins with clumps of dirt scooped from the field surrounding our club house. (Once I was the goblin and Kyle made a throw that could’ve been on SportsCenter’s Not Top 10 as it connected with my face.)
He was the best big brother an annoying little brother looking to prove himself could have. He never whooped me. Not once. I tried like hell to fight him and he would figuratively and sometimes literally hold out a brotherly stiff arm atop my head as I swung…
Read More >
I’m honored to be a committee member of the Midwest Writers’ Workshop. The annual conference celebrated its 40th year last month. That’s 40 years of volunteers working to put on a conference for one reason: they love to help writers.
The workshop, located in my hometown of Muncie, is where I met Caren (Johnson) Estesen who sold WEARING to Wiley. It’s where it all began for me, so I love the chance to give back to it and the awesome group of writers who attend each year. Many of them are like family now.
When folks ask me about how to get into writing, my second tip after the obvious and often forgotten first tip (WRITE!) is to attend a conference.
Matt Shouse put together…
Read More >
Stephen Terrell is the author of Stars Fall, a lawyer, and one of the many writing friends I’ve made through the years at the Midwest Writers Workshop. He’s also a the host of JUST US at Indiana Talks.
I recently joined Stephen to talk about how my label chasing adventures began and my new book EATING.
Listen to the Podcast (My interview starts at around 24:30)…
Read More >
Kimberly Palmer, author of Generation Earn, recently interviewed me about our crazy, global food system over at U.S. News & World Report.
Look folks, when it comes to food, ignorance isn’t bliss, sometimes it means you’re supporting slavery or consuming deadly chemicals.
Read the interview: Surprising Facts Where Food Comes From…
Read More >
This week I appeared on HuffPo Live alongside Dr. Mara Einstein, author of Compassion Inc, and Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive who spoke out against the industry’s deception of the American public and author of Deadly Spin.
I talked about Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices program that I witnessed (or in many cases did not witness) in Colombia while researching EATING. And I also talked about TOMS. My main point was that we are just served up a pill of “do gooding” and we swallow it whole without asking questions about who or how much such ideas benefit the people they are meant to serve.
Dr. Einstein shared a mind blowing example. McDonald’s had a campaign playing up the fact that a portion of all…
Read More >
The line between exploitation and opportunity in our global economy is blurry.
This blurred line is at the heart of my recent cover story in the CS Monitor. I feel that the feature is one of my most important works to date, bridging my travels and research from my first book WEARING and my latest book EATING.
I felt compelled to write the main story as I followed the tragedy of the recent collapsed factory in Bangladesh that killed 1,129 garment workers.
Here’s how Monitor Editor, John Yemma, introduced the feature:
“Kelsey’s reporting is not designed to steer you away from these items but to help you appreciate the human lives behind them.”
Read the main story, “Follow the…
Read More >
…