Frances Moore Lapp

Frances Moore Lapp (born February

10, 1944) is the author of 18 books
including the three-million copy Diet
for a Small Planet. She is the co-
founder of three national
organizations that explore the roots of
hunger, poverty and environmental
crises, as well as solutions now
emerging worldwide through what
she calls Living Democracy. Her most
recent book is EcoMind: Changing
the Way We Think to Create the
World We Want
[edit] Biography
Lapp was born in 1944 in Pendleton,
Oregon to John and Ina Moore and
grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. After
graduating from Earlham College in
1966, she married toxicologist and
environmentalist Dr. Marc Lapp in
1967. They had two children,
Anthony and Anna Lapp. They
divorced in 1977. She briefly attended
University of California at Berkeley
for graduate studies in social work.
Throughout her works Lapp has
argued that world hunger is caused
not by the lack of food but rather by
the inability of hungry people to gain
access to the abundance of food that
exists in the world and/or food-
producing resources because they are
simply too poor. She has posited that
our current "thin democracy" creates
Frances Moore Lapp
Frances Moore Lapp, 2009
Frances Moore
Born 10 February 1944
Pendleton, Oregon, USA
Occupation writer, activist
Citizenship USA
Subjects social change, democracy, hunger
Diet for a Small Planet, Getting a
Grip 2: Clarity,Creativity and
Courage for the World We Really
Want, Getting a Grip: Clarity,
Notable Creativity and Courage in a World
work(s) Gone Mad, World Hunger Twelve
Myths, Rediscovering America's
Values, the Quickening of America,
Hope's Edge, Democracy's Edge, You
Have the Power,
Right Livelihood Award, Rachel
Carson Award, Women's National
Notable
Book Association, James Beard
award(s)
Humanitarian of the Year,
Seventeen honorary doctorates
Partner(s) Richard R. Rowe
Children Anthony and Anna
a mal-distribution of power and www.smallplanet.org
resources that inevitably creates
waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living.

Lapp makes the argument that what she calls "living democracy," i.e. not only
what we do in the voting booth but through our daily choices of what we buy and
how we live, provides a mental and behavioral framework of goods and goodness
that is aligned with our basic human nature. She believes that only by "living
democracy" can we effectively solve today's social and environmental crises.

Lapp began her writing career early in life. She first gained prominence in the early
1970s with the publication of her book Diet for a Small Planet, which has sold several
million copies. In 1975, with Joseph Collins she launched the California-based
Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) to educate Americans about
the causes of world hunger. In 1990, Lapp co-founded the Center for Living
Democracy, a 10-year initiative to accelerate the spread of democratic innovations in
which regular citizens contribute to problem solving. She served as founding editor
of the Centers American News Service (19952000), which placed stories of citizen
problem-solving in nearly half the nations largest newspapers.

Frances Moore Lapps works have been translated into 15 languages, the most
recent of which is a Chinese publication of Hopes Edge.[1]

In 2002, Lapp and her daughter Anna established the Small Planet Institute based
in Cambridge, Massachusetts a collaborative network for research and popular
education to bring democracy to life. With her daughter, she is also co-founder of
the Small Planet Fund, channeling resources to democratic social movements
worldwide.

Small Planet Institutes website, www.smallplanet.org, was revamped in November

2010. It features information on Frances and Anna, including book descriptions and
news articles; resources on food, hunger and the environment; and resources on
power and democratic life.

Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, was
released in 2006. This book completed a trilogy which began in 2002 with the 30th
anniversary sequel to Diet for a Small Planet, titled Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a
Small Planet, co-written with her daughter, Anna Lapp. Then in 2004 she published
with Jeffrey Perkins You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear.
Among Lapp's other books are World Hunger: Twelve Myths and Rediscovering
America's Values.
In March 2010, the Institute's publishing arm, Small Planet Media, released Lapp's
newest book, Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity, & Courage for the World We Really
Want, a through revision of the 2008 Nautilus Gold/"Best in Small Press" award
winning edition.

Her latest book, EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World we
Want, was released in Fall 2011.[2]

In 2006 she was chosen as a founding councilor of the Hamburg-based World

Future Council. She is also a member of the International Commission on the Future
of Food and Agriculture and the National Advisory Board of the Union of
Concerned Scientists. She serves as an advisor to the Calgary Centre for Global
Community and on the board of David Kortens People-Centered Development
Forum. In 2009 she joined the advisory board of Corporate Accountability
International's Value the Meal campaign.[3] She is a Contributing Editor to YES!
Magazine. Lapp's 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 a PBS special with Bill Moyers, the Today
Show, CBS Radio, and National Public Radio.

Lapp has received 17 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions,

including the University of Michigan, Kenyon College, Allegheny College Lewis
and Clark College and Grinnell College. She also held various teaching and
scholarly positions:
-From 1984-1985, Lapp was a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social
Change, at the University of California, Berkeley.
- From 2000-2001, Lapp was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- In 2003, Lapp taught with Dr. Vandana Shiva in Dehra Dun, India, about the
roots of world hunger, sponsored by the Navdanya researching and agricultural
demonstration center.
- In 2004, Lapp taught a course on Living Democracy at Schumacher College in
England.
- In 2006 and 2008, Lapp was a visiting professor at Suffolk University, Boston. [4]

In 1987 in Sweden, Lapp became the fourth American to receive the Right
Livelihood Award, often called the Alternative Nobel. In 2003, she received the
Rachel Carson Award from the National Nutritional Foods Association. She was
selected as one of twelve living "women whose words have changed the world" by
the Women's National Book Association.

In 2008, she was honored by the James Beard

Foundation as the Humanitarian of the Year.In the
same year, Gourmet Magazine named Lapp among
25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair,
and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way
America eats. Diet for a Small Planet was selected as
one of 75 Books by Women Whose Words Have
Changed the World by members of the Womens
National Book Association in observance of its 75th
anniversary.

Historian Howard Zinn wrote: A small number of people in every generation are
forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past the barriers of greed and
power to hold a torch high for the rest of us. Lapp is one of those. The
Washington Post says: Some of the twentieth centurys most vibrant activist
thinkers have been American women Margaret Mead, Jeanette Rankin, Barbara
Ward, Dorothy Day who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths.
Frances Moore Lapp is among them."

Lapp's son, Anthony, is a New York City-based producer and is the director of
Invisible Hand Media.

[edit] Writings

Thin Democracy proposes that the government will govern themselves instead of
the public good. Living Democracy proposes that the government governs for the
public good

Diet for a Small Planet, Ballantine Books, 1971, 1975, 1982, 1991. ISBN 0-345-
02378-1
Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (with Joseph Collins), Houghton Mifflin,
1977, Ballantine Books, 1979.
What To Do After You Turn Off the T.V., Ballantine Books, 1985.
World Hunger: Twelve Myths (with Joseph Collins), Grove Press, 1986, 1998.
Rediscovering America's Values, Ballantine Books, 1989
The Quickening of America: Rebuilding Our Nation, Remaking Our Lives (with Paul
Martin Du Bois), Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Hopes Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (with Anna Lapp),
Tarcher/Penguin, 2002.
 You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear (with Jeffrey Perkins),
Tarcher/Penguin, 2004.
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life,
Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad, Small Planet
Media, 2007.
Getting A Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want,
Small Planet Media, 2010.
EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want, Small Planet
Media, 2011.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Small Planet Institute

Right Livelihood Award website
Works by or about Frances Moore Lapp in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Interview on Humankind Public Radio

[edit] Recent Articles

Retire Ronald McDonald--Do it for our kids! Frances writes that Ronald
McDonald should be retired and McDonald's should halt advertising to kids,
March 2010
The Movement Mother An interview of Frances Moore Lapp with her son,
Anthony Lapp, June 2009
The City that Ended Hunger Frances writes about the city of Belo Horizonte,
Brazil in Yes MagazineFeb,2009

[edit] Videos

Burger King's Flawed Strategy Frances on Fox News

James Beard Awards 2008 Frances Moore Lapp video
Big Picture TV Video clips of Frances Moore Lapp speaking about living
democracy
Interview on Democracy Now!, July 9, 2008
Liberation Ecology: Toward an Empowering Frame to Move from Crisis to
Transformation, Frances Moore Lapp giving the keynote address at the annual
Provender Alliance conference in Hood River, Oregon, October 2, 2008.
On KEXP 90.3 FM in Seattle, Washington An interview with Mike McCormick,
producer of Mind Over Matters, July, 2008