I’m a New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer, book collaborator, deadline-beater, researcher, and former news reporter and food critic.

I am passionate about empowering people from diverse backgrounds to tell their own stories: I have worked with immigrants, entrepreneurs, medical doctors, mental health professionals, career and life coaches, bakers, and restaurant owners. I even had the honor of telling the story of a Vietnamese refugee who escaped the fall of Saigon by leaping onto a fishing boat, and went on to become a noted American chef. The resulting memoir, Mango and Peppercorns, won the 2022 IACP award for Literary or Historical Food Writing.

My recent collaboration, Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond by Beejhy Barhany, is a finalist for the Andy Awards, the only national awards program dedicated to book collaborations. It was also shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Awards and was named one of the best cookbooks of 2025 by the New York Times.