Thursday, October 25th at 7pm, Merced Multicultural Arts Center, 645 W. Main St. Merced.

About the authors:

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.

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 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 .

Patricia Wakida is a bibliophile and publisher. Her
books include "Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese
American Internment Experience", co-editor (2000);
"Unfinished Message: Selected Works of Toshio MoriÓ,
editor (2001); "Highway 99: A Literary Journey through
California's Central Valley" (updated and revised
editon), co-editor (2007). She previously worked as a
senior editor and development director at the
non-profit publisher, Heyday Books, for eight years,
"midwife-ing" collaborative book projects with
partnering organizations, libraries, museums, and
other cultural institutions.

Her relations to books are kept tangible and toothsome
by running Wasabi Press, illustrated letterpress books
and broadsides done on a Chandler and Price press
stashed away in her tiny garage studio in Oakland,
California. She is currently at work on a biography of
consummate bookman and manager of City Lights
Bookstore for 23 years, Shigeyoshi Murao.