Bio & Photos

John T. Edge writes about the foodways of the American South for the New York Times. He is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. He is a longtime columnist for the Oxford American. 

His magazine and newspaper work has been featured in ten editions of the Best Food Writing compilation. in 2012, he won the James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. In 2009, he was inducted into Beard's Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America.

Edge holds an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. And an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. He is 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, studies, and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. The SFA has completed more than 800 oral histories and 30 films, focusing on people like fried chicken cooks, row crop farmers, oystermen, and bartenders.

He has written or edited more than a dozen books, 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, and again in 2001, revised and expanded editions 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.

His latest book, for Workman, is the Truck Food Cookbook, a cookbook and travelogue that catalogues modern American street and truck food. 

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.

He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his son, Jess, and his wife, Blair Hobbs, teacher, and painter. His website is www.johntedge.com. Her website is www.blairhobbs.com.