Bill Buford is a renowned author, editor, and journalist. He is the founder of Granta in England, one of the world’s most successful literary magazines, and Granta Books. In 1995, he joined The New Yorker as Fiction Editor and staff writer, and, for the last 21 years. has been writing about food, food culture, and French and Italian culinary history for the magazine. He is the author of two bestsellers, Heat, about his time in Italian restaurants (and one very famous Tuscan butcher shop), and Dirt, about the five years he lived in Lyon, France, training to be a chef and investigating the origins of French cuisine. (He is also the author of Among the Thugs, a conspicuously non-culinary study of English soccer hooligans, which is nevertheless surprisingly popular among line cooks everywhere.) His books have been translated into 16 languages. He is broadcaster, mainly in the UK, an editor, an anthologist, and has made a two-part film for the BBC about the French kitchen called “A Fat Man in a White Hat.” You can find his how-to-cook French videos—directed by his son (and insufferable clown) Frederick, and filmed by his other son (and very bossy cinematographer) George—at NewYorker.com.
