Biography : David Mas Masumoto

David Mas Masumoto is an organic peach and grape farmer and the author of Four Seasons in Five Senses, Things Worth Savoring, published by Norton in 2003. His previous books include 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 (49) grows peaches, grapes and raisins and works with his 80 year old father on their organic 80 acre farm south of Fresno, Calif.

Masumoto is currently a columnist for and The Fresno Bee has written for USA Today and 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. A German translation edition of Epitaph for a Peach was published in 1997.

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.

In 2002, Masumoto was appointed to the James Irvine Foundation Board of Directors. Previously, he was appointed to the California Council for the Humanities board in 1994 and served as Co-Chair from 1998 to 2001. He wrote, designed and curated the museum exhibition, "Country Voices, Three Generations of Family Farmers" which appeared at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum (1992) and the Japanese American National Museum (1993) in Los Angeles.

He 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.

Masumoto has been the key note speaker at many diverse conferences including American Association of Museums, American Institute of Wine and Food, Dance USA, Ag. in the Classroom National Conference, Chamber Music Society of America, Calif. Teachers of English and Japanese American National Museum. He also was awarded a Breadloaf Writers Conference fellowship in 1996. Feature articles about Masumoto have appeared in Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine and New York Times. His farm has been featured Sunset, Country Living and Glamour Magazines and on television as part of the
California Heartland PBS series.

Masumoto serves on the California Tree Fruit Agreement research board and has been a member of the Raisin Advisory Committee research board and was a founding member of California Association of Family Farmers.

Masumoto and his wife, Marcy (46) have two children, Nikiko (17) and Korio (10). They reside in an 90 year old farmhouse surrounded by their vineyards and orchards just outside of Del Rey, California which is 20 miles south of Fresno.