ABOUT ME

Tovar has been wondering about humans and other animals since he was a boy. He grew up in New England, where he spent long summer days outdoors, exploring and swimming, gathering wild blueberries for breakfast and reeling in brook trout for dinner.

After college—at Dartmouth, in Japan, and at the New School in Manhattan—he headed back to nature, where his education had begun. He worked for several years as a carpenter. Then, having handled umpteen thousand board-feet of lumber and having burned dozens of cords of firewood, he bought a chainsaw and took his ecological values for an enlightening walk in the woods, apprenticing with a forester-logger.

A few years later, having returned to omnivory after a decade as a vegetarian, he decided to take his dietary ethics for a walk in the woods, too, deer rifle in hand.

Tovar has written on hunting, forestry, wildlife, and conservation for Outdoor America, Bugle, Northern Woodlands, and Massachusetts Wildlife, among others. In 2009, he was awarded a Graduate School Fellowship by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and he is researching diverse perspectives on human relationships with the natural world.

He is currently working on his first book—The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian’s Hunt for Sustenance—to be published by Pegasus Books.

He lives in Vermont with his wife Catherine, their affectionate Labrador Retriever, Kaia, and an eclectic mix of cookbooks.