Talks | Literary
Alice Waters
- 7:30PM
Single Tickets
In conversation with Hilton Als
Launch of Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook
Co-presented by BAM and Greenlight Bookstore
Chef, author, and food activist Alice Waters comes to BAM for the launch of her new memoir. In Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, Waters chronicles the circuitous road leading up to the opening of Chez Panisse Restaurant in 1971—a time when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity—offering her own account of how she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers.
Alice Waters is the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school. She has been the vice president of Slow Food International since 2002. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act and the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change. Waters is the author of 15 books, including The New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II and Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea.
A book signing with Waters will follow the event.
Hilton Als began contributing to The New Yorker in 1989 and became a staff writer in 1994 and the magazine’s chief theater critic in 2013. He has received numerous awards including two prizes from the New York Association of Black Journalists, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize for his work at The New Yorker. His most recent book, White Girls, was nominated for a 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award. Als is a professor at Columbia University’s Writing Program and his work has appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City.