The Jonathan Samen Hot Buttons, Cool Conversations Discussion Series gets off to an exciting start. Michael Twitty is the James Beard award-winning author and culinary historian of The Cooking Gene and the recently released Koshersoul: The Faith & Food Identity of an African American Jew. He has baked challah with Jewish cooking maestro Joan Nathan and guided Padma Lakshmi of "Top Chef" fame on southern cooking. As a Black, Jewish, gay man, Twitty embodies many identities. Food is where he brings his whole self. Michael Twitty is in conversation with Robin Washington, an acclaimed veteran journalist and The Forward's Editor-at-Large.
James Beard Award-Winning Author of The Cooking Gene and the recently released Koshersoul: The Faith & Food Identity of an African American Jew.
The editor-at-large of the Forward, Robin Washington grew up in a Chicago family of Black and Jewish civil rights activists. He participated in sit-ins and protests when he was three years old — events he recalls fondly as “family outings." He has gone on to chronicle the movement in his acclaimed PBS documentary, “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!” and in 1995 co-founded the Alliance of Black Jews. The former editor-in-chief of the Duluth News Tribune and the host of "Simply Superior" on Wisconsin Public Radio, Robin is well-known in Boston media circles as a former Boston Herald columnist, an editorial board member of the Boston Globe, and a longtime producer and reporter for WGBH, where he was a Fellow in Science Broadcast Journalism. He also produced the Emmy Award-winning WGBH documentary, "Vermont: The Whitest State in the Union." For WBZ TV, he also interviewed was a young Harvard law student in 1990 for what was likely Barack Obama's first TV appearance. Robin's commentaries have appeared in newspapers around the world, as well as in books edited by Ishmael Reed, Charles Ogletree, Melvin B. Miller and most recently jazz writer Willard Jenkins. He has also appeared on NPR, BET, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and many other broadcast outlets.