Winne, Mark 1950-

PERSONAL:

Born March 7, 1950. Education: Bates College, B.A.; Southern New Hampshire University, M.S.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Fe, NM.

CAREER:

Writer. Hartford Food System, Hartford, CT, executive director, 1979-2003.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Secretary's Plow Honor Award, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2001; Leadership Award, Community Food Security Coalition, 2003; Food and Society Policy fellow, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2002-04.

WRITINGS:

Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2008.

Contributor of essays and articles to periodicals, including Hartford Courant, Boston Globe, Nation, Sierra, Orion, and Successful Farming.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Winne has more than thirty years of experience working for nonprofit agencies seeking to bring relief to underprivileged communities and individuals, especially those lacking basic needs such as food. Winne has served for Connecticut's Hartford Food System, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation as a Food and Society Policy fellow, and he has participated in the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Food Security in Rome, Italy.

Winne's book Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty addresses food consumption and production issues as well as food politics and trends. According to Mark Knoblauch's review in Booklist, Closing the Food Gap explores the "relationships between consumers and producers" and promotes the supply of "better tasting, more nutritional food available to the poor." Winne illustrates the problems stemming from urbanization and government policies regarding agriculture and offers solutions, already successfully implemented, such as community farming, youth involvement, and local farmers' markets. Although Mindy Rhiger stated that Closing the Food Gap is "more suitable for academic readers than general audiences," in her article for Library Journal, she pointed out that the text offers diverse information, including "factual accounts of various food-systems projects" and "memoirlike accounts" that reflect Winne's involvement with these issues. Winne also addresses the irony of the presence of underfed and malnourished people living in the relatively wealthy United States, the limited availability of proper education regarding nutrition and healthy alternatives to commercially processed and mass-produced foods, and the degree to which food issues affect communities across the nation. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews claimed that Winne "salts his personal history with pertinent reportage" without appearing as "a puritanical moralizer" due to his advocacy of "a unified federal program, less dependence on food banks, more slow food, and more investment in healthy viands." A review for Publishers Weekly called Closing the Food Gap an "articulate and comprehensive book" containing "a calm, well-reasoned, and soft-spoken call to arms to fight for policy reform."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2007, Mark Knoblauch, review of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, p. 7.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2007, review of Closing the Food Gap.

Library Journal, November 1, 2007, Mindy Rhiger, review of Closing the Food Gap, p. 90.

Publishers Weekly, October 8, 2007, review of Closing the Food Gap, p. 44.

ONLINE

Food and Society Policy Fellows Web site,http://www.foodandsocietyfellows.org/ (August 14, 2008), author profile.

Official Mark Winne Web site,http://www.markwinne.com (July 10, 2008).