Kevin Young and Gabrielle Hamilton

Kevin Young is the author of ten books of poetry and prose, most recently Book of Hours (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011); and Dear Darkness: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Young’s The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and won the PEN Open Award. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink (Bloomsbury, 2012) and The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (Bloomsbury, 2010). His awards and honors include a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing & English and curator of Literary Collections & the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University, and served as the Holmes Visiting Poet at Princeton University for spring 2015.

Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of PRUNE, which she opened in New York City’s East Village in October 1999. PRUNE has been recognized in all major press, both nationally and internationally, and is regularly cited in the top 100 lists of all major food magazines. Hamilton has made numerous television appearances including segments with Martha Stewart, Mark Bittman, and Mike Colameco and most notably was the victor in her Iron Chef America battle against Bobby Flay on The Food Network in 2008. Hamilton has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Food & Wine, Afar, Travel and Leisure, Elle and House Beautiful and had the 8 week Chef’s Column in The New York Times. Hamilton was nominated for Best Chef NYC in 2009 and 2010 by the James Beard Foundation and in 2011 won the category. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, which has been published in six languages and won the James Beard Foundation’s award for Writing and Literature in 2012. Most recently, she wrote the New York Times bestselling cookbook, Prune, featuring 250 recipes from her East Village restaurant.