On his way to becoming a bestselling author, Trevor Corson spent two years studying philosophy in China, three years in Japan living in temples and studying Buddhism, two years working as a commercial fisherman off the Maine coast, and several minutes acting in a pornographic film—sadly, with his clothes on. Trevor has written about food, health, religion, foreign affairs, and a wide variety of other topics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the Atlantic Monthly. He was the managing editor of the literary magazine Transition, edited by professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. Anthony Appiah at Harvard University, during the years it won three consecutive Alternative Press Awards for International Reporting and was nominated for a National Magazine Award in General Excellence.

Trevor’s first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters, began as an Atlantic Monthly centerpiece article that was included in The Best American Science Writing. The Secret Life of Lobsters was named a best nature book of the year by USA Today and Discover, a best book of the year by Time Out New York, and went on to become a worldwide bestseller in the popular-science category.

Trevor’s second book, The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice (originally titled The Zen of Fish in hardcover), was selected as an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review; it also won “Best American Food Literature Book” of 2007 in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and was selected as a Best Food Book of the Year by Zagat. The book led to Trevor becoming the only “Sushi Concierge” in the United States—a role that he performs with regular events in several cities—and an occasional guest judge on Food Network TV’s hit show Iron Chef America.

Trevor is a frequent public speaker and his work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, ABC World News with Charles Gibson, NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, as well as numerous local television and radio programs; he also blogs for The Atlantic. He is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University and a recipient of the John Fisher Zeidman Memorial Chinese Studies Fellowship (the subject of a feature in The New Yorker by Calvin Trillin). Trevor has also received a Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship and a Knight Fellowship at M.I.T. in the Investigative Science Journalism Boot Camp, and was a Visiting Writer at the University of Memphis MFA program. He is a co-author of the Blue Ocean Institute’s guide Ocean-Friendly Sushi and has been nominated for a 2010 “Seafood Champion” award from the Seafood Choices Alliance for his focus on sustainable ocean harvesting. He speaks fluent Japanese, rusty Chinese, and can converse with lobsters using their own language, which involves urine.