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‘The [MFA] program
was transformative
for me. I can’t say
enough good things
about it. It gave
me time to write,
a support system
and classes in the
program and across
the university.’
34 ARIZONA ALUMNI MAGAZINE
“I got into food writing because I was worked at the school paper and did an internship
interested in the environment,” Kimble says on at the Aurora Sentinel. After college, she landed
a spring afternoon in her office in Tucson’s old a gig teaching English in Nicaragua and on the
barrio. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s side wrote for an English-language newspaper.
highly regarded MFA program in creative writing, A year later, back in the United States, she got
Kimble nowadays is managing editor of Edible hired as an editorial assistant at the Los Angeles
Baja Arizona, a four-year-old food magazine. Times. “But they were doing rounds of layoffs,”
“There are so many things you can talk Kimble remembers. “I jumped ship when I got
about through food,” she continues. “Who are into grad school.”
you paying for your food? What are the labor She arrived in Tucson determined to write
implications? Who’s being exploited? What’s the a book during the two years of the master’s
impact on economics and the environment?” program. She got her start when, in her very
Her book reflects those concerns. She did first semester, she took an elective class in the
prodigious shoe-leather reporting, tramping Geography of the Southwest with Jeff Banister in
through a dairy farm that injects its cows with the School of Geography and Development.
antibiotics and driving to the giant produce “Jeff was going to Nogales for food research,”
warehouses in the Arizona borderlands where Kimble recalls. “I went with him three times to
millions of melons from Mexico are packaged visit the food warehouses.”
and shipped. Kimble was awestruck by the size of the
Her culinary investigations also took her to operations: so many trucks, so many fruits, so
local organic farms, food co-ops and farmers many boxes. It was her first up-close view of
markets, enterprises that help preserve open the resources required to sustain our industrial
land and practice environmentally friendly food system, she says. “I was really excited about
agriculture. reporting the story, about where food comes
A champion of buying local, Kimble says from. It touches on the environment, on global
that if people in a city the size of Tucson shifted warming, on economics.”
just 10 percent of all their spending to local She published an article on the food brokers
enterprises, the community would benefit from a in an online venue. Ultimately, that work
brand-new revenue stream of about $140 million became the first piece of her book.
every year. With encouragement from fellow students in
“‘Vote with your fork’ is a cliche,” she says, the writing workshop, she launched her year of
“but three times a day you have a choice.” And living unprocessed in her second semester. Her
Kimble urges hungry voters to choose the local faculty adviser for the project, Chris Cokinos, an
and the sustainable. author with an interest in the environment, was
a good fit for Kimble. His books, like hers, mix
A Transformative Experience memoir with research.
Kimble’s time at the UA was invaluable in She also connected with Gary Paul Nabhan,
launching her career. the renowned ethnobiologist and author who
“I wrote 90 percent of the book as an holds the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in
MFA student,” she notes. “The program was Sustainable Food Systems at the Southwest
transformative for me. I can’t say enough good Center. Nabhan eventually introduced her
things about it. It gave me time to write, a support to Doug Biggers, a publisher on the verge of
system and classes in the program and across the launching a new food magazine.
university.” By the time Kimble graduated in May 2013,
A California native raised by vegetarian she had a 300-page draft of her book and a job
parents, Kimble always wanted to be writer. As offer from Biggers’ Edible Baja Arizona.
an undergrad at the University of Denver, she