Wordfest presents Laurie Woolever

Wordfest presents Laurie Woolever

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In Laurie Woolever’s Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, she shared a portrait of the late chef, author, and TV host Anthony Bourdain that, in what has become something of a cottage industry, has yet to be topped. The bestselling biographer has now turned the lens on herself in Care and Feeding: A Memoir, in which she reveals a deep dish of a journey as rich and complicated as that of her colleague and friend. The conversation will be hosted by Wordfest’s Creative Ringleader Shelley Youngblut (who gobbled up this astonishingly honest read) and includes an audience Q & A and book signing. The Cookbook Company Cooks will be serving up Care and Feeding, along with Woolever’s backlist and a curated selection of related titles.

We are grateful to HarperCollins Canada for making it possible to connect you with Laurie Woolever.

About Care and Feeding: A Memoir

“Gritty, unflinching, powerful.” –Nigella Lawson

A candid, funny, and occasionally devastating memoir of a woman making her way through the food world, navigating addiction, a cultural reckoning, and an unexpected tragedy.

In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there’s more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her resume: Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain.

Behind the scenes, Wooliver’s life is frequently chaotic, an often-pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, she attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Woolever seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Wooliver’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.

About Laurie Woolever 

Laurie Woolever is a writer and editor. She spent nearly a decade assisting Anthony Bourdain, with whom she coauthored the cookbooks Appetites and World Travel. She’s written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others, and has worked as an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.

Website: lauriewoolever.com
Instagram/Threads: @lauriewoolever

About Host Shelley Youngblut

Shelley Youngblut is the CEO & Creative Ringleader of Wordfest. She was the recipient of the 2020 Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts and the 2018 Rozsa Award for Arts Leadership. She also won the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at the Western Magazine Awards. Youngblut was the founding editor of Calgary’s award-winning Swerve magazine and has created magazines for ESPN, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Nickelodeon, Western Living, and The Globe and Mail. She was also a former pop-culture correspondent for ABC World News Now and Canada AM.

Facebook @ShelleyYoungblut 
Instagram/Threads: @youngblutshelley
Bluesky: @youngblut.bsky.social

Be Curiouser

• Laurie Woolever Loves a Raspberry-Butterscotch Sundae. –NY Magazine
• After travelling the world with Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever has seen it all. –Vogue

Listen

• Laurie Woolever Delivers Anthony Bourdain's Final Book, 'World Travel: An Irreverent Guide”. –Texas Public Radio
• Podcast: Carbface for Radio