Annemarie Anderson is SFA’s oral historian. She received a master’s degree in oral history from the University of Florida in 2017, as the first graduate of that program. She also earned her bachelor’s degrees in English and history from UF.

Erin Ashford directs the beverage program at the Olamaie restaurants in Austin, Texas. She tended bar as a student at Texas State University. On graduating, she focused her career on hospitality. During her time at Olamaie, Ashford has gained recognition for her seasonal cocktail menus from PUNCH, Eater, and other publications. She published recipes you will want to drink in The Southern Foodways Alliance Guide to Cocktails.

Vishwesh Bhatt is the chef at Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi. A native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, he is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Johnson and Wales University. He moved to Oxford for graduate school, abandoned academia for restaurant kitchens, and never looked back. His favorite ingredients are at home in India and the American South—rice, field peas, okra, peanuts, eggplant, tomatoes, and seafood.

Andy Chabot directs the food and beverage program at Blackberry Farm, the Great Smoky Mountains luxury hotel and resort. A Master Sommelier, who has progressed past the advanced level of the exam system, he oversees an award-winning wine program that counts more than 170,000 bottles in its cellars. Andy has been featured in magazines including Imbibe, Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, on The TODAY Show, and more.

Carolyn Finney is a storyteller, author, and cultural geographer whose work aims to develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions and increase awareness of the role of privilege in determining policy and action. A former actress, she has served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board; published books, including Black Faces, White Spaces; and taught environmental studies at Middlebury College.

Paco Garcia is chef at FOKO, a Mexican American breakfast and lunch restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, where the motto is “Illuminating culture through food.” He moved to Louisville from Mexico City when he was 17 years old, and pursued a career in restaurants. Garcia, who cooked for the SFA’s 2017 Fall Symposium, has received much acclaim in Kentucky, including the Critic’s Choice citation in the Best of Louisville Awards.

Sarah Grueneberg is chef and partner at Monteverde Restaurant and Pastificio in Chicago. A Houston native, Grueneberg moved to Illinois in 2005 to cook at Spiaggia where she rose to executive chef. She has competed on Top Chef and Iron Chef and now hosts the PBS Chicago Show Dishalicious. Monteverde has earned praise from The Chicago Tribune, Food & Wine, Eater, and more.

Bita Honarvar, Gravy‘s visual editor, is an Atlanta-based photographer who specializes in storytelling photography. She spent 16 years as a staff photojournalist and photo editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and serves on the board of the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the longest continuously operating photojournalism conference in the U.S. Bita’s work has been featured by Reuters, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, and more.

Ronald Hsu is executive chef and cofounder of Lazy Betty, a tasting menu restaurant inspired by his training, global travels, and the Atlanta, Georgia, community. In New York City, Hsu honed his cooking skills at Le Bernardin and Le Colonial. He opened Lazy Betty in 2019 with his siblings, Howard and Anita. They named the restaurant for their mother, Betty, who ran seven Chinese restaurants in the Atlanta area with their father. 

Rob Long is a writer and television producer. He began his career working the iconic television show Cheers and has written three books, including Bigly: Donald Trump in Verse. He is a contributing editor to the National Review and hosts a weekly radio commentary, “Martini Shot,” on public radio in Los Angeles. Long previously served the SFA as president of our board of advisors. 

Zaire Love is an award-winning filmmaker, music maker, and writer whose mission is to honor, amplify, and archive the stories and voices of the Black South concentrating her work in Memphis, TN, and Mississippi. Her artistry is an ode to being Black and Southern in America because the Black South has always had meaningful “cornbread” to share. Zaire is a graduate of Spelman College [BA], Houston Baptist University [M.Ed], and the University of Mississippi [MFA].  In addition to her work with SFA, Zaire is currently making and creating with her studio, Creative Cornbread.

Kathryn McKee directs the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and teaches Southern Studies and English at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Reading Reconstruction: Sherwood Bonner and the Literature of the Post-Civil War South, and her articles have appeared in journals including American Literature, Legacy, Southern Literary Journal, and Mississipi Quarterly.

Sara Camp Milam is the SFA’s managing editor. She has a B.A. in Spanish from Princeton University and an M.A. in folklore from UNC-Chapel Hill. She began volunteering for the SFA in 2009 and joined the staff full time in 2012. Before finding her way to SFA World Headquarters, Sara Camp was a middle school Spanish teacher and an associate editor at The Oxford American magazine.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, in addition to four previous poetry collections. Nezhukumatathil has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, received a Pushcart Prize, and was named a Guggenheim Fellow. She teaches in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

Ethan Payne is a musician, photographer, and documentary filmmaker living in Atlanta, Georgia. His work has been featured in Oxford American, ArtsATL, and The Bitter Southerner. “We Travel,” the film he created with Brian Foster for SFA’s 2020 Fall Symposium, won awards from the Berlin Independent Film Festival and the Ouray Film Festival. Ethan plays music with his band Easter Island and tells stories about the forgotten, tossed-away South.

Janisse Ray writes about the borderland between nature and culture. She has published five books of nonfiction and two books of eco-poetry, including Red Lanterns. Ray has won an American Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Southern Bookseller Award, among other honors. Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, was a New York Times notable book. She is an inductee to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. 

Todd Richards is co-owner of the Soulful Company Restaurant Group in Atlanta, where he directs Lake & Oak Neighborhood BBQ and Soul: Food & Culture, with more to come. A longtime SFA collaborator and current advisory board member, Richards released his debut cookbook Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes in 2018. From the IACP, that book won the award for best American cookbook of the year. 

Caitlin Schumacher is a pastry chef in Charleston, South Carolina, and SFA’s inaugural Karen Barker Pastry Chef. A Chapel Hill native, she first cooked under Karen Barker at Magnolia Grill in Durham, North Carolina, before moving to San Francisco to work at 20th Century Café and Restaurant Gary Danko. She led the pastry program at FIG in Charleston until 2021. Her next project is Girl Nextdough, where she will focus on sweet and savory baking.

John Simpkins is the president and chief executive officer of MDC, a Durham, North Carolina-based nonprofit that equips Southern leaders, institutions, and communities to improve economic mobility and advance equity. A constitutional law scholar and former counsel for the Obama administration, he is the former vice president of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and a senior lecturer at Duke Law School.

Kayla Stewart is a freelance writer and Gravy podcast reporter who will consider herself a Houstonian no matter where she lives (she lives in Harlem). She hosts conversations on Black Food Folks, and her writing can be found in Eater, The New York Times, and Grub Street. 

Feizal Valli co-owns Birmingham’s Atomic Bar & Lounge, which marries his love for mid-century modern design, full-body costumes, craft cocktails, dive bars, and the people of his city and state. The Atomic has received acclaim from Tales of the Cocktail, among others. Plus, it’s loads of fun. 

Wideman Davis Dance, led by artistic directors Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis, is a dance company of performers, educators, and activists based in Chicago, Illinois, and Columbia, South Carolina. The company is committed to revealing social and political issues through an African American perspective and makes work inspired by and engaged with issues such as race, class, gender, and geography. Their dances tell truths and move spirits, giving voice to the people who perform and view them.

Joe York is a documentary filmmaker, producer, director, and editor with a passion for helping people tell their stories. From 2005 to 2015, he worked at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project and the SFA. During that time, he produced more than 50 short films and four feature-length films focused on the culture, food, music, history, and social issues of the American South. His work has been featured on PBS and in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Garden & Gun, among other outlets.