Malcolm Margolin

Who is Malcolm Margolin?

Malcolm Margolin is an author, publisher, and the founder and executive director of Heyday Books, an independent nonprofit publisher and cultural institution in Berkeley, California. In 1974 Margolin founded Heyday with the publication of his book The East Bay Out, a guide to the East Bay Regional Parks.

Margolin is the author/editor of eight books including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer. His essays and articles have appeared in a number of periodicals including The Nation, Small Press, National Parks, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times.

He has received dozens of prestigious honors including Lifetime Achievement Awards from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the California Studies Association, a Community Leadership Award from the San Francisco Foundation, and a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation. In 2012 he received the Chairman’s Commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the second person in the United States to be so honored.

Margolin has taught publishing courses at University of California Extension, Berkeley, and has served as advisor and mentor to many other publishers. He has lectured at dozens of universities and colleges throughout California including Stanford University and UC Berkeley, at libraries and bookstores, and at other venues such as the David Brower Center, Manhattan Theater Club, Life on the Water Theater, the Museum of Man, and the Japan Environmental Education Forum.