The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that in recent weeks, I have been writing regularly for GOOD, the L.A.-based magazine and media company. I’m excited to announce that I’ve accepted the job of Food Editor there, and I’m launching the new GOOD Food hub today!
IMAGE: Centre-pivot irrigation patterns (Doug Wilson, USDA); state grain reserves depot in Jilin, China (via FP Passport); orange juice diversification (via); and cockscombs (photo by Rowena).
Regular Edible Geography readers (for whom I am eternally grateful!) will, I hope, enjoy what I have planned for the site. The same interest in food—as lens through which we can understand the world we live in, and a toolkit with which to reshape it—will motivate my editorial direction at GOOD.
This blog can sometimes stray a long way away from the territory of mainstream food coverage, to explore the biological effects of political borders and the taste of melted Antarctic ice cores, for example. I’m aiming to cast almost as wide a net over at GOOD, and—excitingly—one of the ways I’ll be doing that is by bringing in guest writers and content partnerships, such as the weekly Taste of Tech series I’ve launched with Gearfuse.
To get things going with a bang, all next week, I’ll be hosting a week-long blog festival, along the lines of 50 Cyborgs or Glacier/Island/Storm. I’ve persuaded a group of amazing food- and non-food writers, thinkers, and makers to share what’s interesting about food from their point of view. The result, I hope, will be a distributed internet cocktail party filled with interesting ideas, unexpected points of view, long-harboured pet theories, and fresh inspiration for all of us.
Among the confirmed participants are Steve Silberman (NeuroTribes), Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG), Nicholas Jackson (The Atlantic Tech), Robin Sloan (Snarkmarket), Marion Nestle (Food Politics), Jessica Helfand (Design Observer), Alexandra Lange (Design Observer), Dechen Pemba (High Peaks Pure Earth), Tim Maly (Quiet Babylon), Smudge Studio (Friends of the Pleistocene), Alex Trevi (Pruned), Kristen Taylor, Drew Tewksbury, Laura Brunow Miner (Pictory), Dan Pashman (The Sporkful), James Reeves (Big American Night), Jonah Campbell (Still Crapulent), Daniel Fernández Pascual (Deconcrete) Dan Maginn, Scott Geiger, and Nick Sowers, and many more—including you, I hope, in the comments at least, if not on your own blogs (feel free to send me an email if you want to find out more about getting involved).
Finally, although I could not be more excited about my new role at GOOD, and the awesome people I get to work with every day (including Peter Smith, whose food rumblings I’ve enjoyed at GOOD and on Twitter for years), I can’t imagine giving up Edible Geography. In fact, I have a new logo to roll out as part of a layout upgrade, and lots of amazing things I can’t wait to publish, including a sneak peek at Henry VIII’s wine cellar (buried beneath the Ministry of Defence in London and usually off-limits to the general public), an interview with a former minimalist poet and wine label writer, a Sissel Tolaas-inspired investigation of the smell of the moon, and more.
So, please don’t stop reading Edible Geography—but please do add GOOD Food to your daily internet rounds (you can stream GOOD Food posts by RSS or from our dedicated Twitter feed, @GOODFoodHQ, too.
