Gustavo Arellano is a columnist with the Los Angeles Times, host of its daily news podcast The Times, and author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. He has been a Gravy columnist for five years and still marvels that a Mexican kid from Southern California has accomplished this. He aims to cover a South that’s yet to make it into American depictions of the region, and to elevate a people who are changing the South as much as the South is changing them.

Scott Barretta is a blues scholar who teaches at the University of Mississippi. He hosts the MPB radio show “Highway 61,” writes historic marker text for the Mississippi Blues Trail, and is lead content consultant for the B.B. King Museum and Delta Cultural Center. He has edited two roots music magazines, Jefferson and Living Blues.

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 new book, I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef, debuts in August.

Cedric Burnside is a Mississippi Hill Country blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the grandson of bluesman R. L. Burnside, but has made a name for himself. He’s been nominated for a Grammy three times, and his newest record, “I Be Trying,” won the 2022 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album.

Edward Crouse and Marie Stitt own Babas on Cannon in Charleston, South Carolina. The neighborhood eatery is inspired by the cafés and bars of Europe. The menu features carefully sourced ingredients and European wines. A second location, Babas on Meeting, opened this past fall.

Latria Graham is a journalist and fifth-generation South Carolina farmer. She is a contributing editor for Garden & Gun, Outdoor Retailer, and Outside, and has written longform pieces about everything from nature to NASCAR to chitlins. After years of covering systemic injustice in underrepresented communities, she recently decided to turn her focus to small towns in the American South at risk of disappearing due to gentrification and suburbanization. 

Stephanie Hart opened Brown Sugar Bakery in 2002, creating southern cakes derived from memories of love and good feelings of her grandmother.  In 2022 she is celebrating 20 years as a baker. She has a second bakery location Navy Pier and is preparing to renovate the newly acquired Cupid candies factory to house Brown Sugar Bakery’s new candy line “Life is Sweet.” Hart is the 2022 Karen Barker Baker.

Jiyeon Lee owns Heirloom BBQ in Atlanta. A former South Korean pop star, Lee turned her attention to culinary school and now enjoys fame via the kitchen. she was a 2020 James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Southeast, and customers form long lines at the door for a taste of her classic barbecue with Korean-inspired sides.

Jason McCall holds a master’s in fine arts (MFA) from the University of Miami. He is an Alabama native, and he teaches at the University of North Alabama. His collections include Two-Face God; Dear Hero,; Silver; A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Mother, Less Child; and I Can Explain.When the time is right, he hopes he can make it back to Hooligans in Tuscaloosa for a gyro combo and an extra side of fried okra to share with his wife and friends.

Rob McDaniel and his wife, Emily, own and operate Helen, a contemporary Southern grill in downtown Birmingham. McDaniel’s passion and respect for traditional Southern cuisine was first inspired by the foods his grandmothers prepared while he was growing up in Haleyville, Alabama. He graduated from Auburn University, has studied at the New England Culinary Institute, and is a five-time James Beard Foundation Best Chef: South semifinalist.

Adrian Miller is a food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. Adrian previously served on the SFA board and received the 2018 Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. Adrian is featured in the Netflix hit High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America. His latest book is Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.

Ricky Moore, a North Carolina native, is owner of Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham. His restaurant features seafood of all types, but excels at showcasing catch from local waters. The availability of fish and shellfish varies depending on what has been caught by North Carolina fishermen, so Moore’s handwritten chalkboard menu changes daily. The James Beard Foundation awarded him 2022’s Best Chef: Southeast.

S. Farhan Mustafa is a freelance food writer by night and a product management director at an analytics company by day. Born and raised in Greenville, North Carolina, he started learning how to cook at the age of four, shadowing his mother and grandma. He’s a former waiter, restaurant cook, and—briefly—a food critic. He’s been an investigative journalist for Al Jazeera English during the Arab Spring, and the founder of a venture-backed tech startup. Throughout it all, he’s fiercely maintained his loyalty to Golden Corral.

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.

Hanna Raskin is editor and publisher of The Food Section, a Substack newsletter covering food and drink in the American South. In 2017, the James Beard Foundation awarded her its first Local Impact Journalism prize. She is a Gravy columnist, and former food editor of The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. Raskin first experienced the power of culinary storytelling from descriptions of  mustard and vinegar in the Zingerman’s catalog.

Nick Reppond and Angie Sicurezza are husband-and-wife owners of GRIT in Taylor, Mississippi. Opened in 2016, GRIT serves a seasonal menu with locally sourced ingredients. Their food is inspired by Nick’s memories of his grandmother’s table.

Daniel Vaughn has always loved barbecue. When he traveled to an SFA barbecue symposium and realized barbecue could be a full time job, he left architecture behind and is now the barbecue editor for Texas Monthly. He now travels extensively eating and writing about ‘cue. Vaughn is the author of The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue, and the coauthor of Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue.

Sean Lilly Wilson is Founder and CEO (chief executive optimist) of Fullsteam Brewery in Durham, North Carolina. Fullsteam’s mission is to craft Southern beer that celebrates food and farm traditions of the American South.

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.

Michelle Zacks has served as the Associate Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center since August 2016. Before that, she worked as a public historian, folklorist, and oral historian, focusing on racial and class dynamics of maritime work and marine conservation in the U.S., Haiti, and Antigua. Michelle holds a Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Hawai‘I, and her book manuscript, based on her dissertation, is titled “The People’s Fish: Florida Mullet and the Coastal Commons.”