Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer tells the story of my involvement in a small food co-op in Orange, Massachusetts, one of the poorest towns in one of the wealthiest American states. Part memoir and part history lesson, the book traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town and tells the story of a rural community imagining and creating a viable alternative to the mainstream in a time of increasingly urgent need to build a more socially and ecologically just food system.

Available directly from the University of Massachusetts Press or your favorite independent bookseller. Or, you know, Amazon too.

“Cathy Stanton presents a piercing, passionate, and profoundly braided account of the community’s effort to save a small food co-op.”—Julian Agyeman, coeditor of Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability

“Stanton’s writing is accessible and enjoyable, not academic. She is engaged, committed, and even hopeful without being naive or cynical. She mixes scholarly inquiries with personal experience, resulting in vivid and unexpected insights into the American food system.”—Brian Donahue, author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town

Here’s how we settled on the title.

Here’s a short video trailer:

Events and talks

Sat, Sept 28 – Author talk at Forbes Library, Northampton (time TBD)

Tues, Aug 6, 6 pm – Author talk at Springfield Town Library, Springfield, VT

Wed, June 26, 6-7 pm – Author talk at Athol Public Library – Register here

Mon, June 24, 5:30 pm – Author talk at the Public Library of New London, CT

Mon, June 10, 6:30-7:50 pm – Author talk at Greenfield Public Library

Tues, May 28, 6:30 pm  – Wendell Free Library (hey, that’s my town!)

Thurs, May 23, 2024, 4-7 pm – Book launch party at Honest Weight brewery in Orange

Sat, May 18, 2024 – Pre-publication fundraiser for Quabbin Harvest Co-op at the Wheeler Mansion in Orange

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Sun, March 10, 2024, 2 pm – I’ll be telling a co-op related story at the Academy of Music in Northampton as part of this year’s Field Notes storytelling event from CISA

Press and reviews

Q&A with Olivia Weeks: Can a small-town food co-op survive? Daily Yonder, April 12, 2024