Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author of the book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. The book has been translated into five languages, was a finalist for a 2019 PEN America award and a California Book Award, and spawned a TEDx talk. Vince is currently at work on a new book, Power Metal, about the trillion-dollar global scramble for the rare metals we need to transition to a world run on re-newable energy—and the human and environmental damage that may come with it.

He has exposed conditions in California's harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with first responders to disasters in Haiti and Nepal, and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Village Voice, The New Republic, The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.

Vince's work has been honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Columbia, Medill and Missouri Graduate Schools of Journalism, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and many other institutions. He has also twice been part of a team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine industry's highest honor.