Stephanie Anderson, 2020 Award Winner
Stephanie Anderson writes on rural life, the environment and agriculture, with a recent emphasis on women’s unacknowledged role in making our food system more resilient and sustainable.
For much of her writing career, Anderson has focused on our broken food system. Her debut nonfiction book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl's Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture, was published by University of Nebraska Press in 2019. It won a 2019 Midwest Book Award (Nature) and was one of three finalists for the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Nonfiction. She is at work on a second book, The Green Wave: How Women Are Building a Regenerative, Stable, and Healthy Food System, which enlarges the lens by profiling women “from the pasture to the boardroom” who are creating a resilient food system for a changing climate while contending with gender, racial and industrial-farming prejudices.
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Anderson’s essays and short stories have appeared in The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Flyway, The Conversation, The Pinch, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org, The Chronicle Review, Sweet, South Dakota Magazine, and many others. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Florida Atlantic University, where she currently serves as an instructor of English.
“I see my writing as a combination of art and activism much as Mr. Margolis likely did, a way to make our world more equitable by sharing knowledge and stories, especially those from rural America,” Anderson says. “I am grateful for the generous gifts of resources and writing time that are included with the Margolis Award.”