As a professor of women’s studies at U.C. Davis for twenty years, Judith Newton spent much of her life in a land grant university, has interacted with its quirky characters, directly struggled with its ever more corporate values, hosted food-based parties in an effort to revive the communal values of its rural past, and participated in a utopian alliance of the women’s and ethnic studies programs as they fought, successfully, to survive.  She has lived the tension between communal and corporate values that lies at the heart of Oink. She is the author and co-editor of five books of nonfiction. Her food memoir, Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen, came out with She Writes Press in 2013 and won twelve independent press awards.