Press, Awards, and Interviews
AWARDS
“Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir,” (Penguin). From the Jury: “Lisa Donovan’s luminous writing deserves the widest possible audience. She writes movingly of loss in the culinary community and left the jury wanting to read more.”
OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HUNGER REVIEWS
Here's a beaut of a sentence, one of many, from Lisa Donovan's new memoir, Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: "[I]f someone values you only when you're about to walk out the door, you should definitely keep walking."
Here's another beaut of a sentence from Donovan — in fact, a couple of them — that hone in on the danger to women (particularly in the food industry) of contenting themselves with gratitude and praise from men for their work, in lieu of professional recognition:
Women are revered straight into abjection, useful only as a totem of inspiration. When we go to make ... work our own, we are unable to survive in the industry the men built, the one they sell our wares within.
Read The Full Review HERE.
LA Times - At what point did you know that you wanted to write this book? Where were you in your life?
LD - When I left Husk in 2014, I ended up having a little bit of a — not necessarily crisis, per se, but I definitely was reckoning with myself about the things that I had been investing my energy in. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, that I could commit myself to the kitchen and still find a way to write.
Stepping away then from the restaurant business, I wanted these two defining interests to live together for a while. I assumed that I’d be writing about foodways and food traditions while also talking about the ways my generation came up in the South. Giants like Ruth Reichl and Gabrielle Hamilton have set beautiful examples about how to have conversations about their lives through food.
Read The Full Article HERE.
GARDEN & GUN - New Reads We’ve Been Loving this Summer
The pastry chef Lisa Donovan knows the insides of some of the South’s top restaurant kitchens even better than people think they want to know them. In her moving, real-talk memoir, the James Beard Award–winning writer describes beautifully the current, sometimes painful moment that Southern writers, editors, and chefs—perhaps especially women—have found themselves in as the world at large seems enamored by Southern food. “And, not for nothing,” she writes, “in the process of getting down into the nitty-gritty of being Southern, of learning how to accept it for what it is and for what it tries to be despite itself, I discovered that I had some secrets up my sleeve with regard to baking that I didn’t even know about.” And she generously shares.
Read The Full Article HERE.
VIDEO + PODCASTS
MAD Symposium - #MeToo, Now What? | Kim Severson, Wade Davis & Lisa Donovan
Politics & Prose Live! Matty Matheson | HOME STYLE COOKERY with Lisa Donovan
Atlanta History Center with Kim Severson
The Dave Chang Podcast - Post-Opening Diaries: Lisa Donovan (‘Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger’)
RECIPES
NEW YORK TIMES COOKING - Chocolate Church Cake
Mind of a Chef - Chef Sean Brock and Lisa Donovan's Buttermilk Pie Recipe
PHOTO CREDIT: VICTOR PROTASIO
FOOD & WINE - Lisa Donovan’s Pie Dough
WASHINGTON POST - Lemon Peach Pound Cake
THE SPLENDID TABLE - Chocolate Chess Pie
GARDEN & GUN - A Grown-Up Pudding Cup
FOOD & WINE - Caramel Layer Cake