Major Works
John T. Edge, photo by N. Jacobs
- Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South (2018)
- The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South (2013, co-editor)
- Truck Food Cookbook (2012)
- Hamburgers and Fries: An American Story (2005)
- Donuts: An American Passion (2004)
- Fried Chicken: An American Story (2004)
- Hamburgers and Fries: An American Story (2003)
- Apple Pie (2002)
- Fried Chicken: An American Story (2002)
- Hints and Pinches with Eugene Walter (2001)
- A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South (2000)
- Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South with Blair Hobbs
John T. Edge: A Biography
John T. Edge and Robert St. John in 2007 at Starkville Reads’ NEA Big Read Food Panel discussion “To Kill a Mockingbird or To Fry a Chicken.” Photo by Nancy Jacobs
John T. Edge is currently the Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
He is also a contributing editor at Gourmet and has written for the New York Times and the Oxford American, the U.S. Airways in-flight magazine, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
He has been nominated for four James Beard Foundation Awards and was a 2004 finalist for the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award.
Edge earned his master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.
As director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi, he documents and writes about the diverse cultures of America with regard to the various foods.
Edge has written numerous books. One of which, A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South, was nominated for the James Beard Award. In addition, he is editor of the Foodways volume of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
His four book series on typical American food includes Fried Chicken: An American Story, Apple Pie: An American Story, and Hamburgers & Fries: An American Story, and Donuts: An American Passion. The books are published by Putnam. Algonquin Books has recently published a revised and expanded edition of Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover’s Companion to the South.
John T. Edge is also The Oxford American‘s food columnist and a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. Edge is heard frequently on the weekend edition of NPR’s All Things Considered and has been featured on many television shows. For a period of three years, he wrote a column for the New York Times.
The Miami Herald has called him “the Faulkner of Southern food.”
The Penguin Press will publish soon The Potlikker Papers, a personal history of Southern food. The first book will tell the story of the modern region and, according to Edge, “how the South came to be at the forefront of American culinary culture… and investigates how issues of race and ethnicity have shaped the place, its people, and its food.”
Edge and his wife Blair Hobbs live in Oxford, Mississippi, with their son Jess.
Awards
- James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K Fisher Distinguished Writing Award (2012)