Current News and Events

March 17, 2025

Audubon Canyon Ranch is excited to announce that the Last House Writing Contest is underway and accepting submissions on the theme of "water." Writers of all ages are invited to submit original, unpublished essays or short stories that explore the theme of this essential element. There is no life without water. Over 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by water, mostly saltwater, with a very small percentage that is fresh and available for use by plants, insects, wildlife, and humans. Freshwater comes in many forms as rain, snow, ice, and more and lives in soil, rivers, streams, lakes, and glaciers. 

A $500 prize will be awarded to the grand prize essay and entries are due May 19, 2025.  

The contest honors the style and spirit of iconic American writer M. F. K. Fisher, who lived on the nonprofit’s Bouverie Preserve for the last two decades of her life. 

March 5, 2025

Extradition Order’s Poet of the Appetites is the concluding part ofcthe band’s ‘American Century’ trilogy. The album is inspired by the lives and loves of M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher appealed to the band for her clean, precise prose and her life of appetite and desire, presenting another side to the ‘American Century’ triangle than politics or science. The trilogy's first two albums focused on John F. Kennedy and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The album is available for purchase digitally or on vinyl.

February 14-March 2, 2025

Gregory Bezat's documentary, The Art of Eating: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher, is available for screening online as a part of the 12th Annual Legacy Film Festival on Aging.  Purchasing a ticket online allows for viewing of the three films in the festival's Food category.

Nashville, Tennessee

April 4-5, 2025

Presented by Les Dames d'Escoffier International, The inaugural M.F.K. Fisher Symposium will be a one-of-a-kind gathering to celebrate the achievements of women in food media while fostering new opportunities for collaboration and growth. This two-day event is an evolution of the M.F.K. Fisher Prize and will bring together women from across the worlds of journalism, food writing, media, PR, and more. 

New York Times Style Magazine

November 15, 2024

"Despite its millions of recipes, the internet hasn’t killed cookbooks. Instead, the genre’s fans seem more motivated than ever to collect and use them — and not just for making dinner. For some, they’re bedside reading. For others, they’re design objects. A cookbook can be a work of cultural anthropology, a historical record, an instruction manual and a vehicle for armchair travel. But what makes a cookbook great? In trying to compile T’s list of the 25 most essential examples written in English over the past 100 years, we prioritized influence — how has a book affected the way we eat, cook, think, talk, photograph and write about food?"

M.F.K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf is included at number eight on the list.

Gregory Bezat's wonderful documentary, The Art of Eating: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher, will be screened twice as a part of the Leticia Jarvis Art Film Series at the Jarvis Conservatory in Napa, California.

Filmmakers Gregory Bezat and Gary Meyer will hold a discussion after each screening.  Participating in the discussion will also be Kennedy Friede Golden (M.F.K. Fisher's daughter, Administrator of the M.F.K. Fisher Literary Trust) and Jerry Anne DiVecchio (author, long-time Fisher friend, Former Food & Wine Editor, Sunset Publishing).

More information can be found at https://www.mfkfisherfilm.com/mfk/

Two screenings:  4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Tickets are $15

July 3, 2024: Sunrises, dark woods, ocean swims, skeletons, crickets, owls, ponds…the main characters in this year’s Last House Writing Contest submissions — spanning generations and the globe — were nearly all animal or elemental. Now in its fifth year, the contest called on emerging writers to explore belonging in nature.

Adults:
First place & grand: Scott McMorrow, “Bird People” 
Second place: Eva Parr, “Land Intimacy” 
Third place: Sara Alexander, “Le Fave” 

Youth:
First place: Isabella Guglielmetti, “Cricket, Cricket” 
Second place: Biana Toussaint, “Shadow Cliffs” 
Third place: Katie Kim, “Treasure Hunt” 

Children:
First place: Annika Thakarar (grand prize winner 2022), “The Pond”  
Second place: Kellie Howie, “Untitled” 
Third place: Siaansh Bhadaurie, “Givers and Takers”

June 8, 2024: The James Beard Foundation® is proud to announce the winners of the

2024 James Beard Media Awards presented by Capital One, honoring the nation’s top food authors,

broadcast producers, hosts, journalists, podcasters, and social media content creators. The recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award is Hannah Dreier for "The Kids on the Night Shift" published in The New York Times.

April 30, 2024: Having just learned that Joan Reardon completed her life journey in December 2023, it seems only right to honor her memory here,  given her extensive study and work writing three books and many articles about M.F.K. Fisher.

Joan and I became good friends over the years she spent researching my mother’s long and complex life. We shared stories as she accessed every piece of information available to  her to gain information that might inform the life story she and my mother agreed she could write.  She visited the extensive collection curated at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America on the Harvard University campus.  She spoke with numerous colleagues, friends, and family members who shared stories and information- all fascinating, some printable.  She gave over 12 years of her life to telling the best version of M.F.K. Fisher’s life possible.  Her biography, Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher, was published by North Point Press in 2004.  She then created a delightful little book, M.F.K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens.  This book was published by the University of California Press in 2008, and was dedicated to “Mary Frances  in honor of the hundredth anniversary of her birth, July 3, 1908.” Joan had previously published M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child & Alice Waters: Celebrating the Pleasures of the Table in 1994.  She also wrote numerous Introductions and Prefaces to important books including M.F.K. Fisher: An Annotated Bibliography by Donald Zealand and Randall Tarpey-Schwed and  even to M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition, in continuous print since 1954.

In addition to her extensive writing about M.F.K. Fisher, she had a long and wonderful marriage to Historian John Reardon, she was a professor and chair of the English department at what was then Barat College in Lake Forest, IL, and she spent many years as Dame of Distinction of the Chicago Chapter of Les Dames D’Escoffier. She was an accomplished and celebrated author and a culinary historian.  Her friendship was cherished by many.

Joan knew more about my family than I ever will.  She cheerfully answered questions I had, and engaged with me regularly as she learned new and interesting pieces of the story.  We spent hours looking through dusty boxes of papers, photographs, and mementos that my mother had collected, and I came to consider her a good and cherished friend.

Thank you, Joan, for doing some hard work, for digging deeply to make someone else’s life come alive, for sharing your own fascinating journey and life with so many, and for leaving behind words  and memories that will be enjoyed long into the future.  You are missed by many, and I hope that you are aware of the large part you have played in many lives.

Kennedy Golden, M.F.K. Fisher’s daughter

March 12, 2024:  The Fifth Annual Last House Writing Contest is here!

The contest celebrates author M.F.K. Fisher, who resided in her “Last House” on the Bouverie Preserve in Sonoma Valley. This year’s theme is “Belonging in Nature.” How does your culture and/or life experience influence how you view nature and yourself in nature?

Entries are accepted from children, youth, and adults who do not currently write professionally. It is FREE for children and youth under 18 to enter. $500.00 will be awarded to the grand prize winner.

Entries will be accepted from Monday, March 11 through Friday, May 17. 

October 1, 2023:  There will be two screenings of Gregory Bezat's film, The Art of Eating: The Life of M.F.K. Fisher, at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco on October 1.  Each screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with Bezat and Fisher's daughter Kennedy Friede Golden, moderated by Celia Sack of Omnivore Books. A VIP reception will be held between screenings at Thos. Moser Furniture.

September 8, 2023:  Les Dames d’Escoffier International (LDEI) is pleased to announce the winners of the 17th annual Les Dames d’Escoffier International M.F.K. Fisher Prize, which awards creative works by women, in any media format, that broaden understanding of the intersection of food and culture. This year’s award recipients are accomplished creators whose submissions were published in 2022.