the short story
After years cooking on the line at restaurants across the US, Kate started writing about food and wine. Her first book, A16 Food + Wine, received the IACP Cookbook of the Year award and the Julia Child First Book award. Since then, she has co-authored more than a dozen books on food and wine. She also co-hosts the podcast Everything Cookbooks and is writing a contemporary mystery set in Northern California.
(photo taken at Perenzin Latteria in the Veneto region, Italy)
THE LONG STORY
After cooking in restaurants for a handful of years after college, I attended Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to get used to sitting still long enough to write, edit, rewrite, and repeat. (Sitting still remains the hardest part.) In 2008, A16 Food + Wine, my first book, launched my publishing adventures.
My nonfiction focus is books on food, wine, and history. I visited the tea-growing areas of Myanmar while researching the Burma Superstar cookbook and traversed Armenia while writing Lavash. It was while working on Lavash that my co-authors and I traveled from Armenia into Nagorno Karabakh, a place known to Armenians as Artsakh. It was heartbreaking to see Artsakh get destroyed by war in 2020, and again in 2023. (Our team put together a fundraising publication to help resettlement efforts.)
On a lighter note, 2020 marked the release of La Buvette, a book I co-wrote with Camille Fourmont. It followed the story of Camille’s charming wine bar in Paris. After La Buvette came two more books about food and wine, including Wine Style, my first solo book, and Italian Wine, a book co-written with A16’s award-winning sommelier, Shelley Lindgren.
In 2022, a few cookbook writers and I started a podcast helping people navigate the world of cookbook publishing. Since then, it’s had 175k downloads and counting.
I’m currently at work on a mystery set at a family camp in Northern California.
*For an interview about how I got my start in food, see Georgia Freedman’s Substack The California Table
NONFICTION BOOKS (from most recent)
My Egypt: Cooking From My Roots (Voracious, 2024), co-author with Michael Mina
Italian Wine : The History, Regions, and Grapes of an Iconic Wine Country (Ten Speed Press, August 2023), co-author with Shelley Lindgren
Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes (Ten Speed Press, 2021) solo author
La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris (Ten Speed Press, 2020) co-author with Camille Fourmont
Lavash: The Bread that Launched 1000 Meals (Chronicle Books, 2019) co-author with John Lee and Ara Zada
Champagne: The essential guide to the wines, producers, and terroir of the iconic region (Ten Speed Press, 2017) co-author with Peter Liem
Burma Superstar: Addictive recipes from the crossroads of Southeast Asia (Ten Speed Press, 2017) co-author with Desmond Tan
The Seasoned Life: Food, Family, Faith & the Joy of Eating Well (Little, Brown, 2017) project manager/writer for Ayesha Curry
Cookie Love: More than 60 recipes and techniques for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary (Ten Speed Press, 2015) co-author with Mindy Segal
Insalata’s and Marinita’s: The tale of two restaurants (self-published) writer for Heidi Krahling
SPQR Modern Italian Food and Wine (Ten Speed Press, 2012) co-author with Shelley Lindgren and Matthew Accarrino
The Preservation Kitchen: The craft of making and cooking with pickles, preserves, and aigre-doux (Ten Speed Press, 2012) co-author with Paul Virant
A16 Food + Wine (Ten Speed Press, 2008) co-author with Shelley Lindgren and Nate Appleman
PRESS
Quoted: Food & Wine
Heard: Good Food on KCRW
Heard: Book Larder Podcast
Heard: The Splendid Table
Heard: Good Food Hour on KSRO
Heard: The Food Seen
In Action: Talks at Google + Lavash (a jingalov hats cooking demo)
In Action: Talks at Google + Burma Superstar (a conversation about the book)
In Writing: Food52.com
Quoted: The National Post
Quoted: The Wall Street Journal