• Eat Joy

    by Natalie Garrett
    Price $22.00
    Hardcover
    Special Order
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    Eat Joy

Laura van den Berg and Claire Messud

present

Eat Joy:
Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers

in conversation with NATALIE EVE GARRETT

This event includes a book signing

Date

Oct
30
Wednesday
October 30, 2019
7:30 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes celebrated local authors and contributors LAURA VAN DEN BERG and CLAIRE MESSUD for a discussion of Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers. They will be joined in conversation by artist and writer NATALIE EVE GARRETT, the editor of Eat Joy.

About Eat Joy

This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America’s most well-regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times―be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache.

Lev Grossman explains how he survived on “sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey” General Tso’s tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself during her twenties. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make “a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune-stuffed pork tenderloin.” What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope.

Praise for Eat Joy

"Natalie Eve Garrett's Eat Joy does this magical thing where it makes you remember the tastes of the heaviest times in your life, while reminding you that everyone on earth has experienced the taste of love and loss, though none of our tastes are the same. This is the first collection that ever made me want to sensually eat, cook, write, and thank all the wonderful makers of the most memorable memories in my life." ―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"Food is a key to unlocking memories. The nourishing stories in Eat Joy show us that thinking about what we've eaten is the easiest way to remember the bitter, the beautiful, and everything in between." ―Julia Turshen, author of Small Victories and host of Keep Calm and Cook On

"Food binds this book together, and each beautifully told story circles life’s truths in ways that are surprising, often revelatory, and always moving. It’s impossible not to love Eat Joy, and equally impossible not to want to bake and eat these dishes while reading. It's an extraordinary collection." ―Dorie Greenspan, James Beard Award–winning author of Everyday Dorie

Claire Messud
Claire Messud

Claire Messud

Claire Messud’s bestselling novels include The Emperor’s Children, a New York Times Book of the Year in 2006; The Woman Upstairs (2013); and The Burning Girl (2017), a finalist for the LA Times Book Award in Fiction. She is also the author of a book of novellas, The Hunters (2001), and a memoir-in-essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write (2020). Her work has been translated into over twenty languages. She writes for Harper’s Magazine, The New York Review of Books and the New York Times, among other publications. She was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2020. Her new novel, This Strange Eventful History, will be published by W.W. Norton in May, 2024.

Laura van den Berg
Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel, a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bard Fiction Prize, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Laura is currently a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard. Her next novel, State of Paradise, is forthcoming from FSG in July 2024. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

Photo Credit: Lucy Bohnsack

Natalie Eve Garrett
Natalie Eve Garrett

Natalie Eve Garrett

Natalie Eve Garrett is an artist and writer, and the editor of The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook: A Collection of Stories with Recipes and the forthcoming Lonely Stories: 20 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Perils of Being Alone. She lives in a town outside Washington, D.C., and along the Potomac River with her husband and two children.

Photo credit: Anna Carson DeWitt

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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Event Series: Good Taste: Conversations on Food and Writing

Harvard Book Store's Good Taste series highlights exciting new cookbooks, food writing, and work that centers around the role food plays in our communities and daily lives.

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Featured event books will be for sale at the event. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.
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