Food Writing is About so Much More Than What’s on Your Plate
Carter Spires, MAFS ’23, poses with goats at Eden Hall Campus. (Courtesy of Carter Spires)
Growth was central to the experience Carter Spires, MAFS ’23, had during his graduate studies at Chatham University. He worked at Eden Hall Campus, where he helped raise Nigerian Dwarf goats, assisted with vegetable production, and improved the farm’s water infrastructure.
Spires, who’d previously pursued a degree in mechanical engineering before becoming immersed in the world of agriculture while working at small farms in Ohio, said there wasn’t a day he didn’t love what he was doing.
“You meet any grower and it’s like, they love to grow,” he said. “Grad school would have been very different if I wasn’t able to be out working in the garden, talking to people, and doing stuff we all love.”
He was experiencing internal growth too. Just a few years earlier, his romantic partner was killed in an automobile-bicycle collision. He entered graduate school to recenter his life personally and professionally. Digging in the dirt was part of that healing. It was “cathartic,” he said.
As he spent more time on the farm, he started rethinking his thesis. Spires’ original plan was to produce a research paper about infrastructure gaps affecting chestnut growers. Instead, he focused inward and decided to pursue a collection of personal, nonfiction essays about food, grief, identity, and more.
“Once I was thinking about doing that, I reached out to some of my professors, who were more than supportive,” he said. That included enrolling in a food writing class with Sherrie Flick, a writer and senior lecturer at Chatham.
The food writing class is part of Chatham’s Food Studies master’s program; it is also an available concentration in the MFA Creative Writing program. Flick helped mold the class when it was developed a little over 10 years ago, and she’s been teaching it ever since.
Flick – an avid gardener who’s published a novel, short fiction, and an occasional food column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – said the class combines learning the craft of nonfiction with reading selected writing about food. The first part teaches students how to write; the second shows them how diverse the genre of “food writing” can be.
“I think some people come into the class thinking we’re going to write restaurant reviews, but really we’re writing more essays, including research and interviews, creative nonfiction,” she said.
“I teach it like a writing class,” she continued. “Most of these students are writing at an MFA level.”
“Everyone knows if you’re in the food studies program, everyone talks up the food writing class,” Katz said.
Quite a few students have gone on to publish work after taking the class. Hal B. Klein, MAFS ’12, who was in Flick’s first food writing class, has worked as a staff writer covering food for Pittsburgh Magazine and the Post-Gazette. Nina Katz, MAFS ’23, has freelanced for the Post-Gazette and the locally-based TABLE magazine.
“I have always loved writing,” Katz, who uses the singular “they” pronoun, said. “I have always been a big self-publisher. I like to make zines.”
Their dad also wrote about food as a side gig to his government job. But even if Katz wasn’t a writer, they probably would have ended up in Flick’s class anyway, they said. “Everyone knows if you’re in the food studies program, everyone talks up the food writing class,” they said. “Everyone is like, oh, you have to take it. It’s so good.”
Katz and Spires said the class not only made them analyze their relationship to food, but it made them better writers. Spires’ thesis included a sprawling essay connecting personal loss, Catholic rituals, and the industrialization of the production of Communion bread.
Katz was able to connect food to their identity as a queer, Jewish person. “I really had a strong desire to do something that brought me a lot of joy about my queerness and state my case and tell stories from my perspective,” they said. “Being able to write the stories that I would like to read was really great.”
Even students in the class who’d never even thought of themselves as “writers” ended up falling in love with the class; Katz said that was due to the outstanding instruction provided by Flick, whose support and feedback helped steward a sort of community between the small group of students.
“I think that’s the true mark of an excellent professor, if you leave the class loving something that you didn’t really have a relationship with before,” Katz said.
Flick said she enjoyed how ambitious the food studies students tend to be, and how their experiences with food systems inform their ideas about the craft of writing. “I love the food studies students,” she said. “They’re so interesting. They want to change the world.”
Learn more about Chatham’s Master in Food Studies degree, including the integrated degree programs available in the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment.
Mick Stinelli is a writer and digital content strategist at Chatham University. His work has previously appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 90.5 WESA, and WYEP.org.