Sandy Tolan
Sandy Tolan is a teacher and radio documentary producer. He is the author of two books: Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later (Free Press, 2000), about the intersection between race, sports, and American heroes; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006). The Washington Post called the book “extraordinary” and selected it among their top nonfiction titles for 2006; the Christian Science Monitor wrote, “no novel could be more compelling” and proclaimed, “It will be one of the best nonfiction books you will read this year.”
Sandy has reported from more than 30 countries, especially in the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. As co-founder of Homelands Productions, he has produced hundreds of documentaries and features for public radio. He has written for more than 40 newspapers and magazines. Since 2002, Sandy has taught international reporting and radio at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley. In 2007, his students won the George Polk Award for their public radio series on the early signs of climate change around the world – the first time students have been honored in the 58-year history of the awards.
