Bill Buford is an author, editor, occasional broadcaster, and founder of the literary magazine Granta. In 1995, he joined The New Yorker as Fiction & Literary Editor and staff writer, and, for the last two decades, has been writing about food and the people who make it. He is the author of two bestsellers, Heat, about his time in Italian restaurant kitchens and in a butcher shop in Chianti, and Dirt, about the five years he lived in Lyon, France, training to be a chef and investigating the origins of French cuisine. He is also the author of Among the Thugs, a conspicuously non-culinary study of English football hooligans, which is nevertheless surprisingly popular among line cooks everywhere. He is the recipient of Sandro Onofrio Roma Prize for narrative non-fiction and the James Beard Award, and his books have been translated into 16 languages. He has made a two-part film for the BBC about the French kitchen called “A Fat Man in a White Hat” and a dozen how-to-cook French videos—directed by his son (and insufferable clown) Frederick and filmed by his other son (and very bossy cinematographer) George—at NewYorker.com. His letters from New York for BBC Radio 3, which include his stories of spending the night in Central Park and working in a sweat shop, will be included in a book he hasn’t figured out the title for but that is likely to include mention of the city where he has lived with his wife, the gifted wine scholar and lecturer Jessica Green, and his sons.
Bill Buford
