Michael Twitty, Cultural Food Interpreter and Author, Talks Story with Bill Gwaltney and Tim Merriman

Michael W. Twitty is and has been a guide, interpreter, culinary historian, author, and food writer who has spent his career tracing the deep connections between food, ancestry, and identity. He's the creator of Afroculinaria, the first blog dedicated to African American historic foodways, and the author of several acclaimed books, including The Cooking Gene, which won the 2018 James Beard Award for Book of the Year and Best Writing, making him the first Black author to receive that honor. He followed it with Rice, KosherSoul (winner of the National Jewish Book Award), and his newest release, Recipes from the American South.

Twitty's work has taken him from the Smithsonian to Yale to the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, and he's shared his research on NPR's The Splendid Table, in the Washington Post, and across numerous television appearances, including High on the Hog, Taste the Nation, and Bizarre Foods America. He's a National Geographic Explorer, a TED Fellow, and was named to the TIME 100 Next list. He also teaches Judaic studies and writes widely on Jewish cultural identity, weaving together the African American and Jewish threads of his own heritage in everything he does.