Trevor Corson Speaker & Booking Information

On his way to becoming a writer and educator Trevor Corson spent two years in China studying philosophy and history, three years in Japan living with Buddhist priests in temples, and two years on an island off the Maine coast working as a full-time commercial lobster fisherman. Trevor has written about food, health, religion, foreign affairs, and a wide variety of other topics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Atlantic Monthly, and teaches in New York City at the New School and Brooklyn Friends School. He was the managing editor of the literary magazine Transition, published by professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. Anthony Appiah at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, during the years the magazine won three consecutive Alternative Press Awards for International Reporting and was nominated for a National Magazine Award in General Excellence.

Trevor’s first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters, began as an Atlantic centerpiece article that was included in The Best American Science Writing edited by Oliver Sacks. The Secret Life of Lobsters was named a best nature book of the year by USA Today and Discover, a best book of the year by Time Out New York, and went on to become a worldwide bestseller in the popular-science category.

Trevor’s second book, The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (originally titled The Zen of Fish in hardcover), was selected as an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review; it was also named a Best Food Book of the Year by Zagat and the Best American Food Literature Book of the Year by the Gourmand Awards. The book led to Trevor becoming the only “Sushi Concierge” in the United States and an occasional guest judge on Food Network TV’s hit show Iron Chef America.

Trevor is a frequent public speaker and his work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, ABC World News with Charles Gibson, NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, as well as numerous local television and radio programs. He is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University with a degree in Religion and with graduate-level work in East Asian Studies and African American Studies. He is a recipient of the John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Chinese Studies Fellowship, a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship, and a Knight Fellowship at M.I.T. in the Investigative Science Journalism Boot Camp; he has also been a Visiting Writer at the University of Memphis MFA program. He is a co-author of the Blue Ocean Institute’s guide Ocean-Friendly Sushi and has been nominated for a “Seafood Champion” award from the Seafood Choices Alliance for his focus on sustainable ocean harvesting. He speaks Chinese and Japanese, and can converse with lobsters using their own language, which involves urine.