Robin Mather

Robin Mather is a Michigan native and third-generation journalist whose passion for food and its sources has taken her around the country and the world. Back in the early ’70s, Robin was suspended from high school for several days for reading the “radical publication” called MOTHER EARTH NEWS. She figured if the high school adminstrators thought it was radical, she had better keep reading it. Now a senior associate editor at MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Robin finds something fascinating in every story she edits for the magazine.

She is the author of The Feast Nearby (Ten Speed Press, 2011), a collection of essays and recipes from a year of eating locally on a budget of $40 a week; and A Garden of Unearthly Delights (Dutton, 1995), one of the first books for the general public to compare genetic modification of crop and livestock to sustainable and traditional agricultural approaches.

She has also worked at major metropolitan newspapers (the Detroit News, the Chicago Tribune) and written for national magazines (Cooking Light, Relish).

When she’s not bellied up to the computer, Robin spends most of her time with her animals: Pippin, an African Grey parrot who tells jokes and then laughs riotously; Callebaut, a brown Standard Poodle who’s way overdue for obedience school; and Guffy, a contentious but loving garden-variety cat. Her three Buff Orpington laying hens live in a portable coop that she designed for the magazine.

Robin is a hand-spinner and weaver, a dedicated knitter of warm socks, a quilter, food preserver and gardener. Learning a little basic woodworking and finishing a novel are her next priorities. She lives near Topeka.