So how does a person who has worked as a chef, fashion designer and singer become a journalist?
I have loved writing since I was a little kid. I used to sit at my mom's typewriter and compose what I thought were going to be novels. Singing and performing were a huge part of my life growing up, but I'd say my love of writing never really waned. After college I wrote a bit about food for a small San Francisco magazine, and the various other food-related escapades followed, but I think I always knew I wanted to be a writer. And I love writing about food, so I still keep that in my life, though the majority is about design right now.
Who are a few of the people who have influenced you in your endeavors?
Bill McDonough, Ruth Reichl, Michael Pollan, Alex Steffen, Duain Wolf, Majora Carter, Buckminster Fuller, my family.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I feel pretty good about my path at the moment. I guess I see five years' maturity on what I'm doing now -- writing, editing, meeting and sharing ideas with brilliant people all over the place, learning a ton. I'm at the beginning stages of a book idea that I'd love to see published between now and then, and I have a few others I'm developing.
How did you get involved with the WorldChanging project?
I had been writing about design at Inhabitat, and the founders of Worldchanging, Alex Steffen and Jamais Cascio, were reading it and asked me to start writing about sustainable design and architecture for them. The Worldchanging book was in its formative stages at the time, and within about six weeks of beginning the design column, I took the job of editing the book, and from there became managing editor of the site as well.
What made you decide to take a position at Dwell magazine?
I've loved Dwell for a long time. I interned there early on, which was certainly part of the impetus for my deepened involvement in design writing from then on. Dwell's got a really fantastic creative team. It's small given the scale of the magazine, so it's very collaborative and high-energy. I always admired the quality of the writing in Dwell so I was very excited to be able to join a place where the art of writing is still really important to the overall product, no matter how visually gorgeous it is.
What has been your biggest challenge as a journalist?
Probably learning strategies for teaching myself about new things quickly -- how to balance reading about a topic, asking experts, surfing the web, etc, until I feel my understanding is solid enough to write about whatever it is. And then allowing myself to write it while I still have questions about it, because particularly with online media, when the author has questions about something their article becomes a provocation for really good reader conversations and debates.
What is the biggest challenge of trying to effect large scale change?
It probably sounds cliché, but I think for me it's maintaining confidence that we actually can affect change at the scale we need it, in the little time we have. I can be very cynical sometimes, and I sometimes waiver in my belief in the power of individual action when I see policy-makers and corporations and marketing campaigns pushing forth agendas that hinder progress.
Why go bio-diesel?
I got my diesel car through a happy accident in 2003, when someone rear-ended my old car and totaled it. I spent about two weeks searching for a replacement of the same gas model, and then had a little revelation and realized it was an opportunity to get on biodiesel and off petroleum. It was towards the beginning of the Iraq invasion and in Oakland, where I was living at the time, biodiesel was really beginning to take hold as both a political and environmental statement. I had some friends who were making it and some who were buying together in bulk, so I got my 1983 Mercedes diesel and joined on. It's grown so much since then, it's actually taken on all kinds of problems of its own, but I still think biodiesel is a powerful change agent.
What project that you have worked on, are you the most proud of?
The Worldchanging book.
Credits:
Interview by Aaron Brendan Jackson
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A brief biography
Sarah Rich is a writer and editor working where sustainability intersects with design, food and consumer culture. She is currently an editor at Dwell magazine, and was formerly Managing Editor of Worldchanging.com. She was Managing Editor and co-author of the bestselling book, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams, 2006), and writer for the forthcoming book, Ecological Architecture
(Fusion/TeNeues).
Sarah received her BA from Stanford University in Cultural and Social Anthropology, after which time she worked in print journalism before entering the world of online media and taking a management role at two leading sustainability-oriented publications. She became Managing Editor of the sustainable design innovation site, Inhabitat.com, in early 2005 and continues as an editorial advisor.
Sarah’s work has appeared in BusinessWeek, Dwell, I.D., ReadyMade, Creative Review, Urban Design Review, and other print media. She has given talks on sustainability at Sao Paulo Fashion Week in Brazil, the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates, the Doors of Perception conference in Delhi, and the EPIC conference in Vancouver, B.C.
In addition to her work in design, Sarah has been deeply involved in the world of food for many years. She worked in television production for the Food Network, as a chef in the Berkeley Art Museum, and has been consistently active as a journalist tackling issues of food justice, farm-to-city systems, branding and marketing, organic standards and slow food, among others. She's currently working as a futurist and consultant for the Institute for the Future's 10-year forecast and has forthcoming food writing on Salon.com. She hopes to write a book on food in the near future. Sarah's commitment to "solutions-based journalism" cultivates a constructive approach to talking about change, and guides her ever-widening lens on sustainability towards innovations, inventions and ideas that assume a better future is possible, and that the power to build it is in our hands. |
