Bestselling authors and eminent national food journalists Corby Kummer and Kim Severson will be discussing their careers and the state of food writing on May 31 as part of the School of the New American Farmstead course “Food Writing From the Farm.”
The talk, “The Long and the Short of It: Two Highly Successful Food Writers, Two Different Approaches” begins at 7:00 p.m. at Common House on the College’s campus. The talk is free and open to the public. There will be a Q&A and a book signing afterwards.
Kummer and Severson will be interviewed by food media expert Clark Wolf about the state of food journalism today, the craft of food writing, and how the landscape of food journalism has changed and continues to evolve. Both award-winning writers are known for their in-depth features, as well as for smart, pithy, informative Tweets, posts, and Instagram posts. They will discuss the preparation and mindset for each.
Kummer, Severson, and Wolf are all instructors for the School of the New American Farmstead course “Food Writing from the Farm.” Kummer has been dubbed “a dean among food writers in America” by the San Francisco Examiner. Currently a senior editor at The Atlantic, he is the author of The Joy of Coffee and The Pleasures of Slow Food. He was the restaurant critic of New York Magazine from 1995 to 1996 and has served as the restaurant critic for Boston Magazine. He is the recipient of five James Beard Journalism Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award.
Severson has been with the New York Times since 2004. In 2014, she joined the Times’ new digital cooking initiative and began reporting on national food news and trends. Previously, she spent nearly four years as the Southern bureau chief for the Times. Before that, she worked as a food writer for the Times and at the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the co-author of Cook Fight; and the author of Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life and The New Alaska Cookbook. She has won four James Beard awards for food writing, as well as the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for her work with fellow reporter Meredith May on childhood obesity. Severson is fresh from her investigative visit to Cuba, from where she Tweeted daily.
Wolf has more than 30 years experience in the food industry and is the founder and President of the Clark Wolf Company. He is a columnist for forbes.com, has created and hosted two broadcast television series, and currently hosts the weekly radio program “At the Table with Clark Wolf.” He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the James Beard Foundation in 2009.
The vibrant working landscape of Vermont has been the inspiration for Sterling College’s curriculum for a half century. Sterling's sustainable agriculture and land management programs were among the first in the nation. The School of the New American Farmstead at Sterling College connects the College's mission of environmental stewardship education by linking ecological principles of land management with the entrepreneurial community-building spirit of today's artisan food movement.
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