Paul Greenberg (essayist)
Quick Facts
Biography
Paul Greenberg is an American author and essayist. Since 2005 Greenberg has written regularly for the New York Times in the Magazine, Book Review and Opinion sections, focusing on fish, aquaculture and the future of the ocean. His book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, was published in 2010 by Penguin Press on July 15, and has entered the New York Times Best Selling Hard Cover List as of August 13. In addition to its commercial success the book received wide critical acclaim, most notably on the cover of the New York Times Book Review by the Times' restaurant critic Sam Sifton "a necessary book," Sifton wrote, "for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how". Four Fish also formed the basis of a 2011 cover story of Time magazine. "Fish are the last wild food" wrote the Time editors, echoing Four Fish's subtitle, "but our oceans are being picked clean. Can farming fish take the place of catching them?" In 2014 Greenberg followed up Four Fish with American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood, a book that examined the odd fact that while the US controls more ocean than any country on earth it imports more than 85% of its seafood from other countries. Greenberg has been both a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow. He currently lives in New York City In 2011 Greenberg won the James Beard Award for Writing and Literature for Four Fish and he now lectures widely throughout North America. In addition to his nonfiction work, Greenberg is also a novelist. His 2002 novel Leaving Katya about the collapse of a Russian-American marriage was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.