Personal Statement

Wapner has a B.A, from the New School for Social Research in New York City and an M.A. from the writing program of the

University of Colorado, Boulder. He is an award winning journalist with two “best feature” awards from the New York Press

Association. His journalism has appeared in Gourmet, Saveur, Food and Wine, Outdoor Life and Field and Stream among

other national publications. Wapner began working in book publishing in the late 1990’s.

Wapner lives in Woodstock, New York, where he grew up. He is married to the Canadian Qi Gong teacher Corinne Mol.

He has a son, Elijah, from a first marriage, and a daughter, Rachel, with Mol. His mother is the artist, Grace Bakst Wapner.

His father, Gerald Wapner, was an attorney and is now retired. The family moved from Manhattan to Woodstock in the 1960’s.

Wapner was shaped by the counterculture of the town, its music scene, and its somewhat Hedonistic, nature-inflected,

politically-left idealism and energy. He is passionate about mountains and rivers, untrammeled forests, food (he worked as a

chef in his twenties), music and art, the history of ideas, fly fishing, canoeing, Japanese culture, going away on adventures

and returning home, coming to terms with his Judaism, the New York Knicks (God help him), and, of course, books. He plays

poker with the same group of friends he played with when he was twelve. The stakes keep getting raised.

Wapner is drawn to books with a strong personal narrative and intellectual depth and breadth. Books on which he is currently

engaged range from a collection of lyrical Buddhist teachings to a popular treatment of fertility science. He was blown away by

“The Wire”. The last great novel he read was Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth. He thought Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s

Dilemma was a masterpiece. Wapner’s first love was poetry.