APRIL 6, 2011
PLEASANTS FAMILY ROOM AT WILSON LIBRARY
6 P.M.
The Center for the Study of the American South is honored to have John T. Edge, monthly food columnist for the New York Times and a contributing editor at Garden & Gun, giving the 2010-11 Charleston Lecture. In his lecture he will talk about the idea of bbq pitmasters and how the use of that honorific has changed our idea about bbq and trace the history of bbq in the South through the stories of individual pitmasters across the region. He will also show a recent documentary of one pitmaster.
John T. Edge is a longtime columnist for the Oxford American and was a contributing editor at Gourmet. His work for Saveur and other magazines has been featured in seven editions of the Best Food Writing compilation. He has been nominated for five James Beard Foundation Awards, including two M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Awards. In 2009, he was inducted into Beard’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America. John has a number of books to his credit, including the James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South. Putnam published his four book series on iconic American eats: Fried Chicken: An American Story; Apple Pie: An American Story; Hamburgers & Fries: An American Story; and Donuts: An American Passion. Algonquin Books published, in 2007, a revised and expanded edition of Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South. Edge is editor of the foodways volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. And he is general editor of the book series,Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Edge has served as culinary curator for the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered, and he has been featured on dozens of television shows, from CBS Sunday Morning to Iron Chef.
Edge holds a master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi and is the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. The SFA has completed more than 450 oral histories and 20 films, focusing on the likes of fried chicken cooks, row crop farmers, oystermen, and bartenders.
He is currently working on a new book for Workman Publishing that catalogues modern American street and truck food. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his son, Jess, and his wife, Blair Hobbs, teacher, and painter. His website is www.johntedge.com.
BENEFIT DINNER AT 3 CUPS IN CHAPEL HILL
Mr. Edge will also be the guest of honor at a bbq benefit dinner that evening for The Center for the Study of the American South that features distinguished chefs from around the Triangle area cooking their personal takes on traditional bbq side dishes. Rodney Scott, pit master from Scott’s Variety Store and Bar-B-Q in Hemingway, S.C., will be doing the bbq for the event. Mr. Scott was featured in a United Tastes column in the NY Timee