Author Description

Laurie Woolever - co-author of bestsellers <i>Appetites</i> and <i>Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography</i> - traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at food publications and revered restaurants in New York and around the world with two of the most powerful men in the business: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. But there's more to this story than the two bold-faced names on her resume.<br> <br> Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is chaotic, an often-pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve out her own space as a woman in a world both toxic and intoxicating, while balancing her consuming work with a sometimes-ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.<br> <br> As the food world careens towards an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding.