Laura Sayre is an independent writer and researcher whose work focuses on the culture of agriculture from a literary and historical perspective. She received her PhD in English from Princeton University in 2002, where her dissertation, Farming by the Book: British Georgic in Prose and Practice, 1697–1820, received the Agricultural History Society’s Gilbert C. Fite "best dissertation of the year" award. From 2003 to 2007 she worked as a writer and editor for, the online magazine of organic and sustainable agriculture published by the Rodale Institute; from 2008 to 2009 she was a fellow with the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University; and from 2009 to 2014 she was employed as a visiting researcher with the French National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA). She has also worked as an organic farmworker, organic inspector, and technical translator, and is a member of the IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) 2014–2015 Organic Leadership group.