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To write about people, we have to reckon with place.

John T. Edge

Nonfiction Mentor

John T. Edge writes about the American South. The Penguin Press published his latest book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, which was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, and a host of others.

Now in paperback, the book was selected by Nashville as a citywide read for 2018. John T writes and hosts the television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network and ESPN. He is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. For 22 years, he served as a columnist for the Oxford American. For three years he wrote the “United Tastes” column for The New York Times. His magazine and newspaper work has been featured in 11 editions of the Best Food Writing compilation. He has won four James Beard Foundation Awards, including two M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Awards. Winner of the 2018 nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, he was inducted into the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame in 2019.