Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé are co-authors of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet and co-founders of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. Frances has just released Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity & Courage in a World Gone Mad.

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Frances Moore Lappé is the author or coauthor of fifteen books including the 1971 three-million-copy bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. Her most recent work, Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life (www.democracysedge.org) calls Americans to rethink the very meaning of democracy. “Lappé…holds a torch high for the rest of us,” said historian Howard Zinn about her new book

Democracy’s Edge completes a trilogy which began in 2002 with Hope’s Edge, written with her daughter Anna Lappé. Jane Goodall said of Hope’s Edge: “Absolutely one of the most important books as we enter the 21st century.” Second in the trilogy is You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear, written with Jeffrey Perkins.

With her daughter Anna Lappé, Frances leads the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute (www.smallplanetinstitute.org), a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life. Together they founded the Small Planet Fund (www.smallplanetfund.org) which solicits and channels resources to democratic social movements, especially those featured in Hope’s Edge.

In 1975 with Joseph Collins, Lappé launched the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), described by the New York Times as one of the nation’s “most respected food think tanks.” In 1990, Lappé co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a ten-year initiative to help accelerate the spread of democratic innovations. Lappé served as founding editor of the Center’s American News Service, which placed solutions-oriented news stories in almost three hundred newspapers nationwide.

Lappé’s books have been used in hundreds of colleges and universities and in more than 50 countries. Her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in publications as diverse as the New York Times, O Magazine and Christian Century. Her television and radio appearances have included PBS with Bill Moyers, the Today Show, CBS Radio, and National Public Radio.

Lappé has received seventeen honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions. In 1987 in Sweden, Lappé became the fourth American to receive the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the “Alternative Nobel,” for her “vision and work healing our planet and uplifting humanity.

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Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author and advocate for sustainability and food justice. A founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, Anna is the co-author of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. Her writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, New Scientist, and Los Angeles Times, among other outlets. She has appeared on PBS, CBC, NBC, and FoxNews and is currently a co-host of the public television series, The Endless Feast. From 2004 to 2006, Anna was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. For more information, visit: www.smallplanetinstitute.org and www.smallplanetfund.org.

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