Heather Richie
Heather Richie is a journalist and writer focusing on world news, the environment, sporting, and food cultures of the American and unbordered Souths.
Heather Richie is a journalist and writer focusing on world news, the environment, sporting, and food cultures of the American and unbordered Souths.
News for 22 January 2019: Scuttlebutt Key West Race Photo Credit
Thank you to Scuttlebutt for a photo credit reporting the Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race.
News for 30 November 2018: African Stock Photo
Some of my photos are now available on the unique Africa-themed stock photography site African Stock Photo. This new site was recently featured on CNN Africa. Read the article about founders Sitati Kiyuti and Dicky Hokie here and their launching of this new site, important for its offerings of photos beyond stereotypical African imagery.
You can find my contributions here.
News for 31 August 2018: Scuttlebutt Photo Credit
Thanks for the photo credit, Scuttlebutt. It’s the little things.
News for 30 July 2018: J/24 World Championships
Fun alert. I will spend the last week of August in the Fraglia Vela Riva Press Office assisting with translating press releases, social media news, and communication for the 2018 J/24 World Championships. Gotta regatta.
News for 01 July 2018: Ireland’s Only Niche Food PR Firm
Following my nose with an interest in the Food On The Edge conference, and literally following the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, I am helping FoodPR.ie to meet the digital production needs of brands like the conference, Esquires Coffee, Aniar Restaurant, and others.Its loads of fun. Aniar means “from the west” which is coolest in an Irish context.
News for 01 April 2018: Explore Parts Unknown
This month, I am producing for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. It might be the coolest content in the universe.
News for 18 February 2018: Nathalie In Italy
Planning for November’s trip with Nathalie Dupree to Italy is officially underway. I’m excited to organizing this special trip, and producing a film about our time there. Learn more here.
News for 10 November 2017: Roads & Kingdoms
Over the next two months, I’ll be working with the Roads & Kingdoms digital production team to give the award-winning digital publication a fresh look. R&K is the best of woke travel and food storytelling, so follow along.
News for 10 November 2017: IACP Food Writing Awards
I’ve been invited to judge the 2018 IACP: The International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Writing Awards! With past winners like Francis Lam and Hunter Lewis, the awards set a benchmark of excellency, and it’s an honor to participate. I am super excited about the reading material coming my way.
News for 10 August 2017: University of KwaZulu-Natal
I’m working on a (fully funded!) PhD now to see what happens when you apply the Southern Foodways Alliance model to Southern Africa. Follow along here: http://foodways.co.za/
News for 01 August 2017: TFC
This fall, I am joining the English department at Toccoa Falls College to teach freshman composition. Everyone will leave my class having mastered MLA in text citations, full stop!
News for 10 July 2017: Hemingway Society Newsletter
As a follow up to my visits to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Hemingway Society asked me to make a contribution to their annual newsletter. At 24 pages, it is much more than a newsletter, and is full of engaging interviews and inspiring ideas. My own thoughts came back to food.
News for 28 March 2016: Covey Rise
This spring, I am helping the small team at Covey Rise magazine revitalize their social media footprint. Headquartered in Alexander City, Alabama, Covey Rise celebrates the lifestyle of the upland sporting enthusiast and the experience of the hunt through vivid photography and engaging writing. An appropriate capstone experience following my final internships, I will be shaking up the magazine’s Facebook and Twitter accounts as interim digital editor to return the (increased!) social footprint in house.
News for 27 August 2015: FULL
My Sewanee School of Letters MFA thesis, FULL, has been accepted for publication by LSU Press as part of their Southern Table Series. So glad to be working with LSU!
News for 06 June 2015: Garden & Gun Land
Garden & Gun is launching a new product called Garden & Gun Land, right up my alley. I’ve asked to stay on another semester as an intern, this time helping to launch the product and learn the business side of the consumer magazine. I also graduated from Sewanee last month. Busy times!
News for 20 February 2015: SAMLA
Food in Fiction was a hit as an SAMLA special session last year (we had to split into two panels, in fact!), so it’s been added to this year’s program as a regular session. Please consider a paper, or check out the call for papers and see if there’s another topic that interests you, and we’ll meet up in Durham! The theme for SAMLA 87 is “In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts,” and it’s always nice when papers are able to intersect with the theme. Culinary arts is a no-brainer here!
News for 03 January 2015: Garden & Gun
I begin an editorial internship at Garden & Gun magazine this spring semester. Dream!
News for 10 December 2014: JFK Library Foundation Grant
Yay! I’ve Just been awarded a $500 grant from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation to travel to Boston and see the latest batch of Hemingway papers to come in from Cuba earlier this year. The papers are all Hemingway’s personal ephemera like “Papa’s Favorite Hamburger” recipe, a fuel bill for his boat Pilar, a letter authorizing him to use Pilar to search for German U-boats, instructions for his household staff, lists and such. The grant is in support of research for my essay, “Leaving Cuba Behind.” The essay will be part of my Sewanee School of Letters thesis.
News for 02 October 2014: The New New South
This fall, I am working with a small team at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies under the guidance of Andrew Park and Duncan Murrell to learn about digital publishing through a case study of The New New South. I am excited to be in a room full of smart people churning out great ideas!
News for 28 September 2014: Rivendell Residency
I am delighted to have been awarded the inaugural Sewanee School of Letters Rivendell Writers Colony Residency. I’ll be spending time on the Mountain this January. Read more here. 
News for 17 September 2014: Pieways In Dirt
Charleston City Paper included Pieways in the new issue of Dirt, the Lowcountry’s local food guide, out today. Click here to read the article.
News for 08 September 2014: Pieways In Post & Courier
I’ve launched a Kickstarter for pro field equipment, and Post & Courier featured the campaign on their website along with two other Charleston-based Kickstarters. Click here to read the article by Andy Paras.
News for 11 August 2014: CLMP Firecracker Awards
This fall, I am serving as a non-fiction reader for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ 2014 Firecracker Indie Book Awards. CLMP has joined forces with the American Booksellers Association and a team of publishing professionals to revive and revamp the Firecracker Awards, last given in 2002. The new set of awards will be devoted to celebrating independent literary publishers, and self published works of high literary merit. Click here to read more about the Firecracker Awards and submit your work. Submissions are blind.
News for 03 August 2014: Oxford American
I will be working with the editorial staff of Oxford American magazine this fall for a three month internship fact-checking, managing social media, and so forth for the annual music issue. This year’s stop: TEXAS!
News for 05 June 2014: SFA Film Bootcamp
Last month, I was blessed to attend the inaugural Southern Foodways Alliance film boot camp and work with filmmakers Andy Harper and Joe York. I had a fantastic time, feasted like a queen, met Michael Pollen, and made my first short documentary about Oxford Canteen. Watch it here!
News for 01 May 2014: Community Supported Pie
May Day! Today is the day, Charleston! Join the launch of Community Supported Pie. It’s easy as … Well, you know. VISIT COMMUNITYSUPPORTEDPIE.COM.
News for 29 April 2014: Okra 2 Opera
Okra 2 Opera was a blast! Spartanburg made an impression. The last time I was there I must have been a child. Converse College has a beautiful campus practically downtown. I was honored to not only meet, but participate in discussions with Dr. Marci Cohen Ferris, and I stumbled upon what I can already tell was a very important introduction, that of meeting Ronni Lundy. She is a founding member of the SFA and her work is a missing piece of the puzzle to me, a woman of the foothills whose paternal grandmother was a sharecropper and maternal great-grandfather a land owner. Ronni argues that class has riven as deeply as race, especially among Southerners living in the upper reaches of the region. Read my wrap up of Okra 2 Opera for The Local Palate, the South’s premiere food culture magazine.
News for 08 April 2014: Food In Fiction
I’m pleased as Punch my panel has been accepted for South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s annual conference. The panel will only be successful if other people are interested in talking about “Food In Fiction” too, so please spread the call for papers far and wide! The conference will be held in Atlanta November 7-9, 2014. For all the fixins, click here and scroll to page 34 for my listing. Serendipitously, last week’s Tin House’s Flash Friday by Caitlin Corrigan includes a passage that struck me as befitting to the subject. Of course, what to do with it is up to you:
When she was better they went to a shrimp boil in the courtyard of someone’s cousin’s apartment complex. Folding tables buttressed by foam coolers. She stood with strangers and reached into the pile of things to eat. Damp newspaper, boil mix and garlic tingling her cuticles, a warm lemon wedged in her palm. Potatoes, half ears of corn, fat shrimp in thin skins. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. It was dark back there. They ate without looking or talking. They sucked the heads dry. The pile of food got low and it was too dark to tell who said it first—Houston, we have a problem—they all said it, put the phrase on repeat, a murmur that never stopped being true, not even when the next pot was drained and they were called again.
News for 26 March 2014: Bittersweet, The Life of Key Lime Pie
On April 17th, I am presenting a paper about the history of key lime pie—with origins and end points both tied to the sea—at Okra 2 Opera: The Conference on Southern Culture. Some of the conference’s sessions are open to the public, so please let me know if there’s a chance you’re in the Spartanburg area and would like to attend!
News for 14 February 2014: ALA Grant
Yes! Such befitting Valentine’s Day news! I learned this morning American College of the Building Arts, ACBA librarian Jenny France, and I have been awarded a 2014 Carnegie-Whitney Grant from the American Library Association! The ALA grant included allowance for me to travel to Wooden Boat headquarters in Maine, The Landing School, Mystic Seaport, Georgetown, and so forth to consult with the nation’s best traditional shipwrights in order to compile a Wooden Boat Reading List that we can update perpetually. Thanks to Edwin McAllister, PhD. for consulting on the proposal and to Mark Bayne for putting a copy of The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction in my hands. The 2014 forecast is looking F-U-N! A sneak peek of the project underway. Blog updates will be available on the ACBA website beginning in June.
News for 23 October 2013: Fiction Southeast
Thanks to one of my professors, Adrianne Harun, I learned about a new online literary magazine dedicated to flash fiction. I was hooked after reading Michael Griffith’s story. Consider this gem from the story: One has no choice but to love those who command the elements, and to propitiate them. Their marks are upon us; we have no choice. I love it when people talk like that. Fiction Southeast is housed at LSU. The editor, Chris Tusa, was gracious enough to invite me to join the staff as a feature writer. In my series Fiction Craft, I will write exploratory articles on—you guessed it—the craft of fiction. This is a great opportunity for me to continue the conversation of craft throughout the year as Sewanee is a summer program. Click here to read the series beginning in January 2014.
News for 15 October 2013: Mudd Pie Girl Bakery
I think I’m more of a bragger than a “publicist,” but I’m nonetheless happy my photo from the first Sunday Brunch Farmers Market of the season and news of my friend Tina’s bakery made it onto Hanna Raskin’s food blog over at Post & Courier. Thanks Hanna, for writing about us!
News for 20 September 2013: Auburn Writers Conference
If you plan to be in the Auburn area Oct. 18-19th, come check out the Auburn Writers Conference with me. I’m delighted they chose my essay “I’m Bringing Funny Back” for a reading!
News for 30 August 2013: Crazyhorse
This fall I begin a new role as assistant at Crazyhorse literary magazine. I remember my last year as an undergraduate at College of Charleston, when the magazine found a sustainable home on our campus. My creative writing teachers enthusiastically welcomed the task of breathing new life into a magazine that published John Updike, Charles Simic, and Billy Collins. In fact, I remember Collins reading at the College. When I started the M.F.A. program at Sewanee and revisited all these influences—Raymond Carver, James Wright—I realized I’d missed Collins’ visit to the Domain by just a season. You can read the history of Crazyhorse here, which offers some insight into why I am honored to help at the magazine in any capacity. My role will not be editorial. I will be compiling mailing list and perhaps tweeting. It should be good fun!
News for 03 June 2013: SFA Oral History Workshop
I was recently very fortunate to get to spend a week in Oxford, Mississippi for the Southern Foodways Alliance Oral History Workshop. It was a sort of amazing time. Click here to the project we put together to represent the week.
