Gina Rae La Cerva is a geographer and environmental anthropologist. Her first book, Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food was recommended by the New York Times Summer Reading List and selected as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2020 by Amazon.
An avid adventurer, La Cerva has researched tsunamis in Indonesia, crossed the Pacific Ocean on a sailboat, and followed the wild meat trade from the rainforests of the Congo Basin to the streets of Paris. Her love of being outside began in childhood, as she grew up exploring the mountains of northern New Mexico.
Gina Rae is dedicated to writing about environmental science and philosophy in ways that both personalize and contextualize dense academic research, broadening the scope of engagement with these subjects to scientists and non-scientists alike.
She has written for The New York Times, Outside Magazine, Nature Magazine, Emergence Magazine, and Atlas Obscura, among others. She has been published by MIT Press, Routledge, Greystone, and Yale University Press.
La Cerva holds degrees from Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Vassar College. She was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow and a Scholar in Residence for the U.S. Forest Service at Grey Towers. She has held residencies at Djerassi Resident Artist Program, PLAYA at Summerlake, Yale Meyers Forest in Easton, CT, Mendocino Arts Center, and at Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island.
La Cerva is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the William R. Burch Prize, Edward C. Armbrecht Jr. Family Fund Award, Coca-Cola World Fund, IBS Small Grants Program, Tropical Resources Institute Endowment Fellowship, Council on Southeast Asia Studies Research Grant, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Scholarship, and the Carpenter-Sperry Research Fund.
