Breaking Bread Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family

Nearly 70 renowned New England writers gather round the table to talk food and how it sustains us—mind, body, and soul

A collection of essays by top literary talents and food writers, Breaking Bread celebrates local foods, family, and community, while exploring how what’s on our plates engages with what’s off: grief, pleasure, love, ethics, race, and class.

Here, you’ll find Lily King on chocolate chip cookies, Richard Russo on beans, Jennifer Finney Boylan on homemade pizza, Susan Minot on the non-food food of her youth, and Richard Ford on why food doesn’t much interest him. Nancy Harmon Jenkins talks scallops, and Sandy Oliver the pleasures of being a locavore. Other essays address a beloved childhood food from Iran, the horror of starving in a prison camp, the urge to bake pot brownies for an ill friend, and the pleasure of buying a prized chocolate egg for a child.

Profits from this collection will benefit Blue Angel, a nonprofit combating food insecurity by delivering healthy food from local farmers to those in need.

Debra Spark is the author of 4 novels, 2 collections of short stories, and 2 books of essays on fiction writing, as well as numerous articles, stories, and book reviews in places like Dwell, Esquire, Food and Wine, Maine Home+Design, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Yankee. She is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Deborah Joy Corey is the author of 2 novels, a memoir, and many essays and short stories that have been published in literary journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, The Agni Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Crescent Review, New Letters, Windsor Review, and Toronto Globe and Mail. She is the recipient of numerous prizes, including Smithbooks/Canada Novel Award, Elle’s Lettres Reader’s Prize, and the Short Story Prize at Symphony Space. Deborah is the founder of Blue Angel, a hunger nonprofit, which delivers healthy produce from local farmers to those in need.