Started during his residency, PLAYA alum Charles Hood received a prize for his essay collection, titled A Salad Only A Devil Would Eat: the Joys of Ugly Nature. It won the Editor’s Choice Prize from Foreword, for being the best nonfiction book of 2021.
In 2022, he published Wild Sonoma with Heyday Books, which has a foreword by Jane Goodall. Two more books by Charles are scheduled to come out in 2023; one on California ecosystems and one on nature after dark.
Charles Hood has been a dish washer, a factory worker, a translator in New Guinea, and a bird guide in Africa. He has published 20 books and been to the South Pole. He currently lives in the Mojave Desert.