Lonely Planet Publishes A FORK IN THE ROAD, Edited by James Oseland

Oakland, CA

Whether reserving at a world-famous restaurant, shopping at an open-air market, or being wowed by street food specialties, our culinary experiences on the road are an integral part of travel. Food is discovery, but as Lonely Planet's new literary anthology, A Fork in the Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure & Discovery on the Road, demonstrates, it's also an emotional and transformative journey.

A Fork in the Road is a collection of 34 original stories by the world's most acclaimed chefs, food writers, and novelists focusing on how travel and eating combine to shape and inspire our lives. Edited by James Oseland, editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine and a judge on Top Chef Masters, A Fork in the Road brings together foodie faves and literary luminaries including Carla Hall, Marcus Samuelsson, Michael Pollan, Curtis Stone, Gael Greene, Rita Mae Brown, Neil Perry, Francine Prose, Jane and Michael Stern, David Mas Masumoto, Fuchsia Dunlop, Frances Mayes, and Madhur Jaffrey, among many others.

James Oseland says of the essays in the book: "Each of them says something ineffable about how we process and remember tastes and sensations, and about how they alter our view of the world. The stories encompass a vast mosaic of experience, from bitter to sweet to everything in between, and an equally vast range of voices. Some are rough, some are intensely refined. But they all have one thing in common: they chronicle food and eating in a deeply personal way."

A Fork in the Road is just that. It's Marcus Samuelsson's epiphany after a meal of fugu that there was more to learn about "fine dining" than he thought or Carla Hall's first attempt at chicken pot pie transforming her approach to cooking. It's David Kamp's childhood memories of a New England boarding house's summer meals or Martin Yan watching his mother at the stove as a child in Guangzhou, China. It's Alan Richman's search for koshary, the national dish of Egypt, during the Arab Spring or André Aciman's redemptive last meal in Tuscany after a disastrous trip.

It's the life-changing moments that inspire you to seek your own culinary adventure.

List of contributors: André Aciman, Rita Mae Brown, Tom Carson, Giles Coren, Naomi Duguid, Fuchsia Dunlop, Joe Dunthorne, Louisa Ermelino, Gael Greene, Carla Hall, Kaui Hart Hemmings, M.J. Hyland, Madhur Jaffrey, David Kamp, Beth Kracklauer, Annabel Langbein, Tamasin Day-Lewis, David Mas Masumoto, Frances Mayes, Sigrid Nunez, Josh Ozersky, Neil Perry, Michael Pollan, Francine Prose, Jay Rayner, Alan Richman, Marcus Samuelsson, Jane and Michael Stern, Curtis Stone, Sandi Tan, Ma Thanegi, Monique Truong, Daniel Vaughn, Martin Yan.

About the Editor:
James Oseland is the editor-in-chief of Saveur, America's most critically acclaimed food magazine. Under his editorship, the magazine has won more than 40 awards, including numerous James Beard journalism awards, and three from the American Society of Magazine Editors. His 2006 book, Cradle of Flavor, a memoir with recipes about his time living in Southeast Asia, was named one of the best books of that year by Time Asia, The New York Times, and Good Morning America, and won awards from the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is also the editor of Saveur's cookbooks, including Saveur: The New Comfort Food and Saveur: The Way We Cook. James is a judge on the cooking competition program Top Chef Masters, and appears as a guest on other international television shows. He is writing Jimmy Neurosis, a memoir of his punk rock youth in the 1970s, for Ecco Press, a HarperCollins imprint. James has lived in India and Indonesia, and now resides in New York City with his husband, Daniel.

About the Book:
A Fork in the Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure & Discovery on the Road
Published by Lonely Planet
Edited by James Oseland
ISBN: 978 1 74321 844 0
334pp, paperback, $15.99
Available: November 2013

An interview with James Oseland on editing A Fork in the Road can be read here.

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