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Our celebration of writers, artists, scholars and cooks who use recipes to revolutionize our relationship to cooking, eating, memory and belonging was livestreamed on December 3rd, 2021. The full recording is available here: Program: -- Introductions -- Karim Atrawi & Nahid Kazemi talk to Marcia Lynx Qualey about their book Arab Fairytale Feasts -- Anita Mannur speaks with Veruska Cantelli about her forthcoming book Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures -- Ismail Einashe speaks to Bhakti Shringarpure about his journey with Somali cookery and on African-migrant-owned restaurants in Sicily. -- Suchitra Vijayan reveals a cookbook-in-progress, Suvai: A Mother's Inheritance --...

Sudanese novelist Leila Aboulela recently sat down for a BookRising podcast with Radical Books Collective’s Bhakti Shringarpure. Aboulela spoke on an array of topics starting with an evocative and deeply incisive reflection on the works of recent Nobel winner Abdulrazak Gurnah. The conversation then moved on to topics such as literature from Sudan that must be translated, on the differences between literature of East Africa and West Africa, on writing about Muslim lives and culture, and the importance of diaspora readerships and novels.

Seen as indulgently visual and often fairly pricey, it seems like a stretch to think of cookbooks inspiring radical acts. But if slurs about food smells and ingredients are persistent forms of racism and xenophobia, then cookbooks are their precise antidote. 

On November 12th, 2021, we spoke with 6 authors of African sci-fi and fantasy, and launched several new books.