“This young food activist makes Southern cooking healthy and cool.”
—New York Times
Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, and author of critically acclaimed Vegan Soul Kitchen (VSK): Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (Da Capo/Perseus March 2009). For the past ten years he has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity. His interest in cooking, farming, and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food.
Bryant is currently a fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, a national project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He has garnered many honors and awards for his work including receiving the inaugural Natural Gourmet Institute Award for Excellence in Health-Supportive Food Education and being selected as one of the 2008 “Hot 20 Under 40” in the San Francisco Bay Area magazine 7×7. Bryant’s first book (coauthored with Anna Lappé, foreword by Eric Schlosser), Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), is a winner of a 2007 Nautilus Award for Social Change.
Since the publication of Grub, Bryant has traveled to dozens of cities speaking at public events as well as colleges and universities such as Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. Bryant contributes essays and recipes to a number of online and print outlets, and his work has been featured in Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, Yoga Journal, Jet, Vegetarian Times, and many other publications. He has made dozens of national radio and television appearances (Fox, NBC, PBS, BET, and Sundance) including making a guest appearance on the eco-reality series Mario’s Green House and being a host on The Endless Feast, a 13-episode public television series that explores the connection between the earth and the food on our plates.
In 2002, Bryant founded b-healthy! (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth), a multi-year initiative designed to empower youth to be active in creating a more just and sustainable food system. Along with Ludie Minaya, Elizabeth Johnson, and Latham Thomas, Bryant helped elevate cooking as an important tool for organizing and base building in the food justice movement.
Bryant completed the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. He holds an M.A. in American History from New York University and a B.A. with honors in English from Xavier University of Louisiana.
Bryant is currently working on his third book and a television project.
He lives and creates in the Laurel District of Oakland, California with his brilliant, beautiful, and ‘bout it-‘bout it fiancée Jidan and their bird, Kiwi.