Betty Fussell

Betty Harper Fussell, Ph.D.
Born Betty Ellen Harper
(1927-07-28) July 28, 1927
Riverside, California, U.S.
Pen name Betty Fussell
Occupation Writer, Author, Educator, Historian
Language English
Nationality American
Alma mater Pomona College (B.A.),
Radcliffe College (M.A.),
Rutgers University (Ph.D.)
Genre Biographies, Cookbooks, Food History, Memoirs
Notable works The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Vogue, Food & Wine, Metropolitan Home, Gastronomica,"The Story of Corn", "I Hear America Cooking", My Kitchen Wars, Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef, "Mabel: Hollywood's First I-Don't-Care Girl"
Notable awards See Awards
Years active 1952–present
Spouse Paul Fussell
(1949–1981; divorced)
Children 2
Website
bettyfussell.com

Betty Harper Fussell (born July 28, 1927) is an award-winning American writer[1] and is the author of eleven books, ranging from biography to cookbooks, food history and memoir. Over the last 50 years, her essays on food, travel and the arts have appeared in scholarly journals, popular magazines and newspapers as varied as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Vogue, Food & Wine, Metropolitan Home and Gastronomica. Her memoir, My Kitchen Wars, was performed in Hollywood and New York as a one-woman show by actress Dorothy Lyman. Her most recent book is Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef, and she is now working on How to Cook a Coyote: A Manual of Survival in NYC.

Personal life

Betty was born and raised Riverside, California on July 28, 1927. She later married her college sweetheart Paul Fussell in 1949 and had two children, Rosalind and Sam Fussell. In 1981 the couple divorced.

Betty has traveled widely throughout Europe, the Near East, Africa, India, China, Russia, Latin America, Southeast Asia. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California.

Education

Betty earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Pomona College in 1948. She earned an M.A. from Radcliffe College in 1951 and a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University in 1974. Her thesis focused on English Tragicomedy in the Renaissance.

Teaching career

From 1952 to 1978 Betty taught courses in English Literature, specializing in Shakespeare and the literature of comedy, drama, and film at a variety of colleges and universities, including Connecticut College, Douglass College, Rutgers University, and the New School University.

Betty began teaching classes focusing on food writing and food history beginning in 1993 at Columbia University, the French Culinary Institute, NYU’s Food Studies program and the New School University's Food Studies department.

Editor and food historian

Early on in her career, Betty edited many of her former husband Paul Fussell's works of literary criticism and military history. Betty became a columnist for Country Journal, a contributing editor to Lear’s, the editor of AIWF publication, Wine, Food & the Arts (1996, 1997), and is a current contributing editor to Food Arts. Betty Fussell also briefly held a position as an editorial consultant for Atlantic Monthly Press.

Betty has frequently appeared on national and cable networks and has lectured on American food history at many venues, such as the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian; Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY; Princeton University Art Museum; New York Historical Society; Radford University; New York University; New School University; Cornell University; Dartmouth College; AIWF National Conferences at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, in Boston, Miami, New York; AIWF branches at Washington DC, Santa Barbara, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Cleveland; IACP National Conferences in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Portland, Phoenix, Montreal, Baltimore; Workshop for Professional Food Writers in West Virginia; keynote address to National Association for Interpretation in Cleveland; Nestle International in Ohio; Culinary Historians of New York, of Boston; Friends of Schlesinger Library in Cambridge; Cambridge School of Culinary Arts; Boston University; Johnson & Wales University; Institute of Culinary Education, French Culinary Institute, James Beard Foundation, Culinary Institute of America, New York University, The Mercantile Library, YMHA, Coffee House Club, National Arts Club, Dutch Treat Club, Century Association, Cosmopolitan Club.

Written works

Betty Fussell's career began with her biography of silent film comedian Mabel Normand. Betty moved from writing about the history of film to the history of food in both short and long form. She has published countless articles in both popular and academic outlets and authored 11 books.

Essays

Her essays on literature, theater, movies, comedy, travel, and food have appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Holiday, Travel and Leisure, Connoisseur, Vogue, Savvy, Lear’s, Cosmopolitan, Journal of Gastronomy, Food Arts, Wine and Food, Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, More, Kitchen Gardener, Metropolitan Home, Saveur, Gourmet, Living History, American Horticulturist, Countryside Magazine. Her essay “On Murdering Eels and Laundering Swine” (Antaeus: Not for Bread Alone (Ecco Press: Spring, 1992) is listed in Best American Essays 1992, reprinted in A Literary Feast (Atlantic Monthly Press: 1993) and in Women on Hunting (Ecco Press: 1994).

Critical and scholarly essays include:

Books

Books include:

Work in progress: How to Cook a Coyote: A Recipe for Survival in NYC

Awards

Betty Fussell won the James Beard Foundation’s Journalism Award and was inducted into their Who’s Who in American Food and Beverage in 2009. She also won the IACP’s Jane Grigson Award for Scholarship in 1993 and the Amelia Award of the Culinary Historians of New York in 2010.

Other Awards and Honors include:

References

  1. ↑ Wells, Pete (November 24, 1999). ""My Kitchen Wars" by Betty Fussell (review)". Salon. Retrieved 21 July 2012.

External links

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