Leaving the party: Award-winning author Julia Turshen on what comes after success

(Photo credit: Melina Hammer)

Julia Turshen is a best-selling author and podcaster. Over the past decade she has written a bookshelf worth of cookbooks and built a powerful brand rooted in a warm, accessible voice that speaks to home cooks. On her hugely popular podcast, Keep Calm and Cook On, she hosts fascinating conversations that start with food and spiral out to politics and culture with everyone from New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino to Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski. 

The political implications of food and of feeding people is baked into Turshen’s writing, whether she’s developing recipes designed to reduce food waste, or sharing ways to feed a crowd planning a protest. She writes with nuance, always looking for the ways what we eat can lead to larger cultural connections.

She also runs a website, Equity at the Table, a database of professionals across the food industry designed to promote the work and careers of women and non-binary individuals, people of color, and the queer community. 

After publishing her most recent book, Simply Julia, in March, Turshen started thinking deeply about taking a break from the work she has been doing for more than a decade. “I am currently on some kind of sabbatical or leave of absence from media work, and I am working full-time at an organic, small vegetable farm that's 10 minutes from my house,” she said. The past several years have made her question the idea of what a good life looks like, and what kind of work can provide satisfaction on a daily basis. 

Sherrell Dorsey and Annaliese Griffin spoke to Julia Turshen about her work pushing back against racism, misogyny, and appropriation in the food industry, how food helps us have difficult, cross-cultural conversations,  why she doesn’t call herself an activist, and Rick Ross’s lawn.

Sherrell Dorsey:  I want to talk about your website Equity at the Table. You’ve introduced me to so many people that I had never come across. I just watched High on the Hog, the Netflix documentary series about how American food really is Black food, and the influence of African-American cooks on our culture, and I feel like I’m being introduced now to all of these folks who cover food in this very dynamic and competent way. And I am someone who likes to eat, but I do not like to cook, so I find this all to be very fascinating!

I appreciate what you just shared, because I think if you're a food media person there's this expectation that you write or create for everyone. And it's just good to remember not everyone wants to cook all the time. Including myself. I am just so happy that you watched High on the Hog. I think it's so amazing, and I'm so grateful that they were able to make it. Everyone who's part of that program, it's so important, I just hope everyone sees it. If this is an excuse to get more people to watch High on the Hog, it's on Netflix, watch it.