Central to SFA’s steadily rising influence and national presence is the leadership of John T. Edge, who has been director since inception.
A quick text or email from Edge and even the busiest chefs, restaurateurs, photographers, farmers, or other professionals will carve out time to speak with someone, make an introduction, agree to cook at an event or help in whatever way they are needed. Raised in Clinton, Georgia, about an hour and a half southeast of Atlanta, he earned a master’s degree in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi in the late 1990s. While there, he organized a 1998 symposium on Southern foodways and bonded with Egerton over a shared vision for what would become SFA.
Edge, who also holds a M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College, has contributed to influential publications including The New York Times, Garden & Gun, and Oxford American. He’s a thought leader and foremost voice on all things related to Southern food, which is why he’s often called for commentary by journalists on TV, radio and influential newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
In 2010, he won the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Edge wrote a food history of the modern South called The Potlikker Papers, which was published in 2017 and explores race, class, and the changing South through food. The book was awarded a prize by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Like many things Edge touches, there is a robust symbiosis between his work for SFA and his extracurriculars. For a dozen years Edge served on the James Beard restaurant awards committee in a personal capacity beginning when he was a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. This service lies outside SFA work, though clearly each role benefits the other.
“If there are ways in which my work outside of SFA benefits the SFA, that’s great,” Edge said.
Edge, who is 55, says he plans to do more teaching and writing over the next five years and making time for that will mean stepping back from day-to-day SFA leadership at some point. “There’s a lot of cult of personality. It’s like ‘The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,’ or ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,’” said Bentley, the SFA contributor and journalist. “It’s going to be hard. They’ve got to bring in other people, start to groom.”
A succession plan is coming into focus. There is a campaign underway to raise $2.7 million to endow the director position, which will be named for Edge when he retires or assumes a new position. About $2.2 million has already been committed. Other SFA leaders such as managing editor Sara Camp Milam and project coordinator Afton Thomas have taken on more visible roles and expanded responsibilities in recent years. They and others are increasingly being put forward to speak at events while Edge purposefully takes more of a backseat when he’s able.
Members often mention these other emerging leaders when talking about the future of SFA.
