ERIC SCHLOSSER

ERIC SCHLOSSER has been a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly since 1996. His work has also appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the Nation, and the New Yorker. In 1998 Schlosser wrote an investigative piece on the fast food industry for Rolling Stone. What began as a two-part article for the magazine turned into a groundbreaking book: “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal” (2001).  The book helped to change the way that America thinks about what it eats.  “Fast Food Nation” was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years, as well as on bestseller lists in Canada, Great Britain and Japan. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. Schlosser’s second book, “Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market” (2003), explored the nation’s growing underground economy.  It also became a New York Times bestseller.

Hoping to counter the enormous amount of fast food marketing aimed at children, Schlosser decided to write a book that would help young people understand where their food comes from and how it can affect their health.  Co-written with Charles Wilson, “Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food” became a New York Times bestseller in the spring of 2006.  Later that year Fox Searchlight Pictures released a film based upon “Fast Food Nation”, directed by Richard Linklater. In 2007 Schlosser served as an executive producer of There Will Be Blood, a film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and based upon the novel “Oil!” by Upton Sinclair.  In 2009 Schlosser served as a co-producer of Food, Inc., the Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Robert Kenner.  In recent years, two of Schlosser’s plays have been produced in London: Americans (2003) at the Arcola Theatre and We the People (2007) at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.