Author of the week: Manny Howard

last updated 8 January 2015

For a man who created a farm in his Brooklyn, N.Y., backyard, Manny Howard isn’t much of an idealist, said Michael Astor in the Associated Press. In My Empire of Dirt, his appealingly ragtag memoir about trying to feed his family of four from just a patch of earth, Howard readily acknowledges that the entire project began as a stunt for New York magazine, meant to poke gentle fun at the local-foods movement. But the resulting pileup of chicken manure and rabbit carcasses gravely tested the patience of his publishing-executive wife, and his story eventually became a drama about a marriage redeemed by the intervention of a freak tornado that swept through city streets. Because Howard stuck with his project after the 2007 twister destroyed his crops, he says, “I started to win her back.”

A stronger marriage wasn’t the project’s only benefit, said Julie Vadnal in Elle. Howard dropped 29 pounds during his first eight months in agriculture. “I didn’t grow any booze, which is usually a central part of my diet,” he says. He’s since sold the rights to his story to Hollywood. But his happy ending didn’t come without risk. While building his first chicken coop, he partly lopped off his pinky finger with a power saw. These days, when Howard wanders outside to collect eggs from his chickens, the repaired digit won’t cooperate with attempts to stuff his hands into his pockets. “On some very fun level,” he says, “it looks like a toe.”