Charlotte's Favorite Bookstore

Paul and Angela Knipple's culinary tour of the contemporary American South celebrates the flourishing of global food traditions "down home." Drawing on their firsthand interviews and reportage from Richmond to Mobile and enriched by a cornucopia of photographs and original recipes, the Knipples present engaging, poignant profiles of a host of first-generation immigrants from all over the world who are cooking their way through life as professional chefs, food entrepreneurs and restaurateurs, and home cooks.

Beginning the tour with an appreciation of the South's foundational food traditions--including Native American, Creole, African American, and Cajun--the Knipples tell the fascinating stories of more than forty immigrants who now call the South home. Not only do their stories trace the continuing evolution of southern foodways, they also show how food is central to the immigrant experience. For these skillful, hardworking immigrants, food provides the means for both connecting with the American dream and maintaining cherished ethnic traditions. Try Father Vien's Vietnamese-style pickled mustard greens, Don Felix's pork ribs, Elizabeth Kizito's Ugandan-style plantains in peanut sauce, or Uli Bennevitz's creamy beer soup and taste the world without stepping north of the Mason-Dixon line.

The Carolina African American Writers' Collective (CAAWC), based in Raleigh, is a workshop and readers' group consisting of poets, fiction writers, dramatists, essayists, journalists, children's writers, graphic artists, publicists, photographers, teachers, librarians, archivists, and editors who meet monthly to critique one another's work, read and discuss books by African American authors, and share information about the literary scene. CAAWC also serves as a literary and cultural arts liaison for the community.

The following writers will be featured at the event:

Carolyn Beard Whitlow is Dana Professor of English at Guilford College.  

Linda Beatrice Brown is the author of Black Angels.

Adrienne Christian's poetry has appeared in Alimentum, Miller's Pond, and Turtle Quarterly. 

L. Teresa Church penned her first poem at age sixteen. Her writings have appeared in African American Review, Drumvoices Revue, Pembroke Magazine, North Carolina Literary Review. 

Sandra Y. Govan retired from the English Department at UNC Charlotte. Govan is a founding member of the Wintergreen Women Writer’s Collective. She has pieces published in Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers, My Soul is a Witness, Father Songs, and Erotique Noire.

Brian H. Jackson's writing appeared in Fertile Ground: Memories & Visions and North Carolina A & T State University journals All That Jazz and Perceptions.

Chantal James is a creative Fulbright Fellow and the author of the
novel Fes is a Mirror. 

Grace Ocasio won the Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka Prize in Poetry in 2011, and she was a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry in 2010.   Her poetry has appeared in Rattle. 

Tanure Ojaide is the author of The Beauty I Have Seen and The
Tale of the Harmattan. 

Darrell “SCIPOET” Stover received an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University, founded the Spoken Word Performance Poetry Ensemble in Washington, DC. 

L. Lamar Wilson, Cave Canem fellow and winner of the 2011 Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize, is an English PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill. 

Gideon Young lives in Efland, North Carolina. He is a member of the Carolina African-American Writers’ Collective. His Masters in Elementary Education is from North Carolina State U.