Sidney Isenberg Lecture Series featuring John T. Edge in conversation with Francis Lam

The author of the acclaimed The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South tells his own story for the first time: of growing up in a house wrecked by violence and a South haunted by racism – and of how his search for home led him to find escape and belonging through food, until he realizes that gathering at the table is just one small step toward reckoning.

In this unflinching and moving memoir, John T. Edge takes us on a quest for home in a South that has both held him close and pushed him away as he tries and fails and tries again to rewrite the stories he inherited. Born in a house where a Confederate general took his first breath and the Lost Cause narrative was gospel, troubled by the violence he witnessed as a boy, Edge ran from his past, searching for a newer and better South. As founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and a contributor to newspapers and magazines, he told stores that showcased those possibilities.

In the process, Edge became one of the most visible and powerful voices in American food . . . until he found himself denounced by the audience he once guided, faced down the limits of his work, and returned to his origins to find himself once again. Beginning in Georgia and ending in Mississippi, his search spans the Deep South and charts a very American story of the truth telling and soul-searching it takes to love your people and your place.

John T. Edge writes and hosts the Emmy Award-winning television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network, ESPN, Disney, and Hulu. Edge also writes a restaurant column for Garden & Gun. His 2017 book The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South was named one of the best books of the year byNPR and Publishers Weekly. Edge serves the University of Mississippi as a teacher, writer-in-residence, and director of the Mississippi Lab. And he serves the University of Georgia as a mentor in their low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the artist Blair Hobbs.

Francis Lam is the host of public radio's The Splendid Table and is the editor-in-chief of Clarkson Potter, the market leader in cookbook publishing. His writing has won numerous awards from the James Beard Foundation and the International association of Culinary Professionals. As an editor, he was responsible for New York Times Bestselling books by Chrissy Teigen, David Chang, and Christina Tosi, as well as the James Beard Award-winning Victuals by Ronni Lundy and Jubilee by Toni-Tipton Martin, among others. 

A frequent public speaker, Francis has been a storyteller, commentator, and conversationalist in many forms of media. As host of The Splendid Table, a public radio show and podcast with a weekly audience of half a million listeners, he's carried the legacy of a 30-year-old program and focused it on our contemporary, multicultural food world. He also served as a judge on two seasons of Top Chef Masters and The Great American Recipe and is a frequent guest judge on other shows.

In past lives, he was a columnist for the New York Times Magazine, the features editor at Gilt Taste, a senior writer at Salon, and a contributing editor at Gourmet. His work has appeared in Best American Food Writing, and in ten editions of the annual Best Food Writing anthology. He believes that, in professional football, that would count as a dynasty; in ancient China, not so much.

The Sidney Isenberg Lectures have been established by his friends, colleagues and family as an expression of love and appreciation for his values and commitment to the healing process and to the advancement of learning and growth – affirming his conviction that the human relationship is the agency through which change comes about.