David Mas Masumoto in Free Program with Musicians from Taiko Center of Los Angeles

On September 6th at 6:00 p.m. the South Pasadena Public Library, the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library, and the South Pasadena Chamber of Commerce will proudly present nationally-acclaimed bestselling author David Mas Masumoto in the Library Park outside the Library Community Room facing El Centro Street. The event is co-sponsored by Poets & Writers, Inc. with financial support from the James Irvine Foundation. Special thanks to South Pasadena Community Services. No tickets are required for the free public program. Masumoto, who has earned the title “America’s Literary Farmer,” will be preceded by a live performance by drummers from the Taiko Center of Los Angeles.

David Masumoto is the author of Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm, which 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 also received the San Francisco Review of Books Critics’ Choice Award for 1995-96. David Mas Masumoto is also the author of Harvest Son, Planting Roots in American Soil, Four Seasons in Five Senses: Things Worth Savoring, and Letters to the Valley: A Harvest of Memories. He possesses a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from U.C. Berkeley and a Master's Degree in Community Development from U.C. Davis. He also attended International University in Tokyo, Japan. Masumoto was appointed to the California Council for the Humanities Board in 1994 and served as Co-Chair from 1998 to 2001. In 2002, Masumoto joined the Board of Directors of the Irvine Foundation, dedicated to enriching California's intellectual and cultural environment. All of his books will be for sale at the event.

Feature articles about Masumoto have appeared in Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine and the New York Times. His farm has been featured in Sunset, Country Living and Glamour Magazine, on television as part of the California Heartland PBS series, as well as on the nationally-aired program "Ripe for Change.” Those who have had the good fortune to witness Masumoto’s sensual, lyrical writings should already understand why he headlines this year’s Tuolumne Meadows Poetry Festival in Yosemite National Park –even though he’s an autobiographical prose stylist.

"Masumoto uses his farm as Thoreau did his Walden pond. (Masumoto) is a grower of peaches and grapes. He also is a writer, a wonderful writer."
--Peter H. King, Los Angeles Times