Best-selling author Michael Pollan, a vocal advocate for change in America’s food systems, will speak at UVM Thursday, Oct. 30 at 5:30 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel. Pollan will participate in a question and answer conversation moderated by Amy Trubek, UVM associate professor of nutrition and food science and director of the Food Systems graduate program. A book signing in Billings will follow.

Pollan comes to UVM as part of the university’s First Year Summer Read program. His book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation was required reading for incoming first-year students this summer. The program is a new student’s first introduction to the academic life of the university; the selected book is integrated into foundation courses across the colleges.

Tickets, which were available first to first-year student, then to the entire UVM community, are sold out. Limited overflow seating will be available in Billings Lecture Hall, and the event will be live-streamed online. Check the UVM homepage for a link to the livestream the day of the event. The book signing that follows the event will be free and open to the public.

In addition to Cooked, published in 2013, Pollan is author of four New York Times bestsellers: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Learn more about Pollan, the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, on his website.

Have a question for Michael Pollan? Submit it for consideration to be included among the questions asked at the event.

An Evening with Michael Pollan is hosted by President Tom Sullivan, the Department of Student Life and the Honors College.

Information: (802) 656-3272, PresidentialEvents@uvm.edu.