Jessica B. Harris

Jessica B. Harris is the author of eight books documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. In addition to her cookbook, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim, her previous works include The Africa Cookbook, The Welcome Table, Sky Juice and Flying Fish, A Kwanzaa Keepsake, Tasting Brazil, and Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons.

She has lectured on African American foodways at the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and at numerous institutions and colleges throughout the United States and abroad. She teaches at Queens College in New York City and—hopefully—at the University of Mississippi.

In 2004, Harris was awarded the Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award.