Tables of Contents

Readers of Content,

Welcome to our blog! After turning words into food for five years running, we’ve decided to flip things around and turn our food, evenings, and feelings back to the page. It’s a tricky recipe to master, but (we think) we’re ready to give it a shot.

Every month, our TOC readings bring authors and readers together at a few shared tables to read and eat from some of the best writing around. We cook snacks inspired by each author’s passage, build textually-inspired playlists to set the tone for the evening, and talk about the intersections of food and literature. We hop from nostalgia to community, desire to deprivation, creative process, dish-building, character development, and the ways we define ourselves through our stories and our plates. There’s so much to digest from the discussions of that night that we need a new way to dig in and share what’s on our minds...so we’re hoping this blog will be one way to do that.

What sort of writing will we serve up here? Well, we’re not entirely sure. Event recaps from the TOC crew, certainly (look out for the first recap of our summer readings, from our own Anne Foster). Expositions and recipes for past literary dishes. And fuller explorations of some of the fascinating paths we've begun down in our discussions at TOC readings. Some of the seeds germinating in our heads include: cultural appropriation in food and literature that has been a vivid topic at readings in BK and LA; discussions of authors and stories we want to hear, and the chefs and foods we want to taste; the language of consumption and how we talk about black bodies, inspired by Morgan Jerkins and Jill Scott; the nostalgic anchors of aroma and fiction in our lives; creativity and process in cooking and writing; and much much more!

We’d love for this to grow into a platform for diverse voices on wide-ranging issues. Food and literature cross through every essential issue in our lives, so we hope through these lenses we can get at the meat of some things. If you want to write for us (or sign up for our mailing list, or suggest some authors or collaborators, or just say hi!), send a note to contentables@gmail.com and/or follow us/get in touch on instagram at @tables.of.contents.

Thanks for coming to the table,

TOC