FORA.tv Speaker - Sandy Tolan

Sandy Tolan is co-founder of Homelands Productions. Since 1982, he has produced dozens of documentaries for National Public Radio and Public Radio International. Much of his focus has been on land, water, natural resources and indigenous affairs in the US, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Central Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. His programs have won numerous awards, including three from the Overseas Press Club, the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, three Robert F. Kennedy awards for reporting on the disadvantaged, a Harry Chapin World Hunger Year award, and a United Nations Gold Medal award. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and dozens of other publications. He was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Since 2000 he has been teaching at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, where he directs the International Reporting Project. Sandy is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006), based on his award-winning documentary for NPR's Fresh Air about a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman whose families lived in the same house before and after the founding of Israel. The book was Booklist's "Editor's Choice" for best adult non-fiction book of the year. His first book, Me and Hank (Free Press, 2000), is an exploration of heroes and race relations in America through the experience of baseball slugger Hank Aaron.