Novella Carpenter is an urban farmer and writer based in Oakland, CA. She studied at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where she worked closely with Michael Pollan and Cynthia Gorney. Her farm, GhostTown, started in 2003, and these days hosts a flock of chickens, honey bees, vegetable beds, and 30 fruit trees. Carpenter teaches writing and urban agriculture at the University of San Francisco.