I'm a Nashville-based food writer, cookbook author, and magazine editor who loves telling stories about farmers, cooks, kitchens, and local food communities and as often as I can, I enjoy collaborating with others to create books. My own books include Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm (St. Martin's Press, 2011) and Grits: A Cultural and Culinary Journey Through the South (St. Martin's Press, 2018) and I’ve collaborated on others including The New England Kitchen: Fresh Takes on Seasonal Recipes (Rizzoli, 2014), and The Row 34 Cookbook (Rizzoli, 2021).
These days, I'm the editor in chief of the Local Palate, a Southern food culture magazine that tells the stories behind the people, places, and foodways that make up this diverse and dynamic culinary region. I'm also one of the co-founders of Dirty Pages, a storytelling project that launched in early 2015 and celebrates shared, passed-down food memories—one of the exhibits now lives permanently in New Orleans at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. Before moving to Nashville, I lived in Boston where I worked as a writer and editor at Boston magazine and DailyCandy.com and, together with my husband, Dave and friend Nicole Kanner of All Heart PR, I co-founded Eat Your Heart Out Boston. In my spare time, I freelance for various publications like Wine & Spirits Magazine, FoodNetwork.com, and Thrillist. I once received the LDEI M.F.K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing and currently serve on the board of Les Dames d’Escoffier International.
For some of my thoughts on writing, restaurants, books, and things, take a listen to the Eat Your Words podcast on Heritage Radio, or my conversation on No Time for Coffee.
When I'm not digging up story ideas, I'm usually in the kitchen, cooking up travel plans, or generally scheming about what and where I'll eat next.