Please note: This event was moved from its original date of Wednesday, March 5 because of inclement weather. It will now take place on Thursday, March 6 at the same time. All tickets remain valid! Additional tickets still available.
Together with The Bitter Southerner and the Charleston Library Society, Buxton Books is proud to welcome food writer Shane Mitchell to Charleston to celebrate her book, The Crop Cycle. For tickets and more information, please click here.
James Beard Foundation award winner (five times over, no less) Shane Mitchell may dislike grits, but her family has deep roots in the South. Braving the wilds that most of us call home, indoor and out, Mitchell has used her time as a food journalist to cultivate an exploratory and tasty collection of the histories of foods we know and love. Joined by writer Stephanie Burt, take a journey through Mitchell’s latest – The Crop Cycle; eleven crops, their histories, and truths about the fruits and vegetables that have become staples in the South. Along with Bitter Southerner and Buxton Books, this exposé on your favorite Southern dishes is not to be missed.
For tickets and more information, please click here. If you are unable to attend the event, but would like to purchase one or more signed copies, please click here.
About The Crop Cycle:
Over the last nine years, Shane Mitchell has braved snakes, fire ants, floods, rallies, marches, protests, pageants, and near heat stroke to write the essays contained in this book. From grits to tomatoes to peaches to okra to rice to onions and beyond, she’s tracked down the history of southern fruits, vegetables, and grains in the oddest of odysseys. The Crop Cycle is the culmination of her long journey and quest to better understand the South’s tangled love affair with food – 11 crops and their stories, presented in the order they were published. And of course, we’ve saved something delightful for dessert – a very special story at the end that has never been published.
About Shane Mitchell:
Shane Mitchell writes narrative nonfiction and cultural criticism. She is the recipient of five James Beard Foundation awards, including two M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing prizes, for her stories on consequential crops and problematic food histories. While she lives in northern New York, both sides of her family are deeply rooted in the rural South. Her father’s ancestors were Huguenot refugees who arrived in South Carolina in the late seventeenth century, while her mother’s relatives settled in western Tennessee soon after. Some of them may have distilled moonshine, but no one is saying for sure. Shane challenges systemic Southern cultural bias without reservation, but also finds joy in the eccentric rituals of the region. She still hates grits.
About Stephanie Burt:
A native North Carolinian, Stephanie grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, on good Southern cooking and lots of books. She received both her BA and MA in English from UNC Charlotte and was a former instructor of English and American Studies there as well. Her writing has taken her from the haunted halls of old mountain mansions to the white beaches of the West Coast of Florida, but these days, all things culinary fill her plate. She is a full-time freelance writer for a variety of publications and loves that a pen and paper let her behind the scenes and in the kitchen.