Jim Risser was a reporter for the Des Moines Register for 20 years, winning, among many other awards, two Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative reporting about the U.S. grain exporting industry (1976) and about the destructive impact of modern American agriculture on the environment (1979). He was the Register 's Washington bureau chief from 1976 to 1985. From 1985 to his retirement in 2000, he was director of the John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford. He was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1990 to 1999, he lives in Ashland, Oregon, where he is vice-president of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Secretary of Jefferson Public Radio.