Photo by Lucy Isaacs '25. Tyler Sage and Margot Anne Kelley pose for a photo at the Odyssey Bookshop on Nov. 9.
By Lucy Isaacs ’25
Staff Writer
On Wednesday, Nov. 9, the Odyssey Bookshop hosted a discussion with author Margot Anne Kelley, author of “FoodTopia: Communities in Pursuit of Peace, Love & Homegrown Food,” published this August. Kelley was joined in conversation by Tyler Sage, who operates Sage Farm in Bernardston, Massachuestts, and was one of the many farmers featured in Kelley’s book. On her website, Kelley advertises the book as describing the “story of five back-to-the-land movements, from 1840 to present day, when large numbers of utopian-minded people in the United States took action to establish small-scale farming as an alternative to mainstream agriculture.” Located on the bookshop’s first floor, the event was intimate, garnering an engaged crowd including a few Mount Holyoke students.
Kelley taught in the English department at Ursinus College according to GFT Publishing. Kelley also taught photography and art theory at the Art Institute of Boston for almost 25 cumulative years, Godine reported. Over the course of the event, she assumed a similar professorial role as she answered questions concerning a wide array of topics. “The audience seemed to know a lot about the topic and knew what specific questions to ask, and they had very good insights. I think that it was more a discussion format than a traditional reading,” Katharine Kurdziel’25 said.
After reading a brief passage from her book, Kelley described its conception in 2016, when she noticed a scarcity of agricultural movements among her peers, members of Generation X. While she set out to understand this specific absence, Kelley admitted that she could not land on a cohesive explanation as to why Generation X broadly chose not to engage in “back-to-the-land” farming, but was still drawn to the cycles by which these movements have grown and waned in popularity.
Kelley also shared that she had been fighting cancer as she wrote the book, recalling the challenges associated with balancing hands-on research visiting farms and conducting research online. She continually highlighted the importance of academic databases, which she described as having made the book possible. In a moment of self-effacing humor, Kelley admitted that her first draft had included over 800 footnotes.
Sage, who is featured in Kelley’s book as an example of small-scale farming, served as a counterpoint to Kelley’s more pedagogical approach, sharing with the audience the details of his life on his farm on which he raises pigs. While being frank about the benefits and the difficulties of participating in a “back-to-the-land” lifestyle, Sage described the effects of rising summer temperatures on his pigs, who he struggles to keep sufficiently cool. Admitting that he hadn’t had a day off in a month, Sage made clear that while he very much enjoys his subversive agricultural lifestyle, it is not a particularly easy endeavor. “I really liked having [Sage] there because I think that as cool as the author was, she was more of an academic, so having a visual representation of what she was talking about was beneficial. And he brought in a lot of [valuable] points,” Kurdziel said.
Many audience members lingered after the talk as Kelley engaged in further conversation and signed copies of her book, which are available for purchase at the Odyssey Bookshop.