Writing with Hunger: Lisa Donovan on Food, Memoir, and Voice

This week on Kitchen Tape, Rose and Crystal sit down with Lisa Donovan, James Beard Award–winning author of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, now widely regarded as one of the definitive food memoirs of our time. We talk about hunger as both subject and structure — emotional, creative, intellectual, and literal — and dig into the discipline of memoir, writing food as personal narrative, and claiming authority in a voice shaped by appetite, loss, labor, and desire. The conversation moves through literary lineage, publishing realities, and why food writing endures when it tells the truth plainly, without performance.

Mentioned in this episode:
• Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan
• David Black Literary Agency
• Dear Women: Own Your Stories by Lisa Donovan for Food & Wine
• M. F. K. Fisher
• Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
• When French Women Cook by Madeleine Kamman
• Everything Is Under Control by Phyllis Grant
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron
• Desserts by Pierre Hermé and Dorie Greenspan
• Bernard Clayton Jr. (books)
• Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer
• Samin Nosrat