Summer Brennan

The Oyster War follows the years-long controversy surrounding the Drakes Bay Oyster Company farm, formerly located in Point Reyes National Seashore. West Marin native Summer Brennan paints a full picture of how the Drakes Bay controversy came to be and investigates the complexities of the dispute and its key players, combined with a deep devotion to her native northern California. Brennan is a UN correspondent in New York City and a former reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Point Reyes Light. Presented by Point Reyes Books.

About Summer Brennan: Summer Brennan is an award-winning journalist who grew up on the rural Northern California coast. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, The Believer Logger, Pacific Standard Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fitness Magazine, Ryot News, Smith Magazine and other publications. As a political writer she works regularly with the United Nations Press Office in New York covering issues related to decolonization, disarmament, human rights, and the environment. Since 2012 she has led the press team for the UN Disarmament and International Security Committee. She spent five months working as the sole staff reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning rural weekly The Point Reyes Light.  She also worked as an editor of the region’s other newspaper, the West Marin Citizen. She was awarded several honors by the National Newspaper Association in 2013, including first place for best feature story.

She holds a B.A. from Bennington College and an M.A. from the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she studied journalism and the Middle East. She was once able to write essays about nationalism in Arabic, although that ability is rustier now. She has studied French, Spanish, German, Urdu and Swedish, has lived and volunteered in Pakistan and El Salvador, and spent several months traveling around Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, sometimes by motorbike.