Author Event: What is Queer Food? by John Birdsall

Join us for a special event with John Birdsall, author of What is Queer Food?. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance.

“What Is Queer Food weaves the constellations of possibility underlying our cuisines in Birdsall's gorgeous, ebullient prose. Warm and generous, precise and exacting, this book is one of a kind, tied together by Birdsall's knowingness and generosity. An absolutely gorgeous work.” — Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal

“Delectable, delightful, delovely! Birdsall's genius has given us a queer chronicle, full of both famous names and untold stories, revealing the subversive secret life of food in America. And done with all the charm and wit of MFK Fisher—a seemingly effortless feast of the senses.” — Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less and Less Is Lost

“John Birdsall’s What Is Queer Food is a staggering, sweeping work full of wit and bite. The book defies category: it’s a history and a philosophical argument, a chain of interconnected stories told in Birdsall’s unmistakable voice, sexy and joyous and angry and thrumming with life—it casts a bright light on an essential, under-recognized dimension of American gastronomic history.” — Helen Rosner, food correspondent, The New Yorker

Food in America and Europe has long been shaped, twisted, and upended by queer creatives. Beloved food writer John Birdsall fills the gap between the past and present, channeling the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party-houses, and humming interior lives of James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Truman Capote, Esther Eng, and others who left an indelible mark on the culinary world from the margins. Queer food is brunch quiche à la Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney’s ecstatic salade composée, and Rainbow Ice-Box Cake from Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking. It’s the intention surrounding a meal, the circumstances behind it, the people gathered around the table.

With cinematic verve and prose that dazzles, What Is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution is a monumental work: a testament to food’s essential link to a modern queerness that reveals how, like fashion or tastes in music, food has become a language of LGBTQ+ identity.

John Birdsall is a writer working at the intersection of food and queerness. He’s the author of What is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution . He also wrote The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard , which looks at the iconic American celebrity chef’s complicated sexuality and public identity. It was an Amazon Top 100 Best Book of the Year, as well as a finalist for a James Beard Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction. Birdsall has received two James Beard Awards for food and culture writing, and is the co-author, with chef James Syhabout, of Hawker Fare (Ecco Press, 2018). His bylines include The New York Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, Bon Appétit, and more. He publishes a newsletter, Shifting the Food Narrative, and is on Instagram @john_birdsall. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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