Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She went to University of Washington in Seattle where she majored in Biology and English. She later studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley s Graduate School of Journalism for two years. She s had many odd jobs including: assassin bug handler, book editor, media projectionist, hamster oocyte collector, and most recently, journalist. Her writing has appeared in Salon.com, Saveur.com, sfgate.com (the "SF Chronicle"'s website), and "Mother Jones". She has been cultivating her farm in the city for over ten years now, and her neighbor