Education
- B.A. in Medieval Studies, Wesleyan University, 19??
David Karp was already fluent in Latin when he graduated from High School. At the age of 20, while majoring in Medieval Studies at Wesleyan University, he published a translation of the 6th-century Latin author Venantius Fortunatus. After graduation, he started a successful career in risk arbitrage and option trading on Wall Street. Recovering from a serious drug addiction, however, he changed course and started his new career as a free-lance fruit writer and photographer for the L.A. Times. Conspicuous in his pith helmet, Karp researches exotic fruit and uncommon varieties of common fruit both on California farmers markets and abroad for high-end specialty stores like Dean & DeLuca in New York, and he publishes his discoveries in regular columns in the Los Angeles Times and Gourmet, sometimes also in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Now one of the best known experts in his self-chosen field, he was featured in a six-page article in The New Yorker (Aug. 19&26, 2002, pp. 70-79). Learn about the California Rare Fruit Growers, whose Fruit Gardener magazine regularly features beautiful fruit photographs and articles by David Karp.