Julia Turshen

In 2019, Turshen's podcast, Keep Calm and Cook On, was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals Award.

In 2018, Turshen's book Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in the category of Best Food & Cookbooks.

In 2017, Turshen released Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved, whose proceeds she donated to the ACLU. The book was a meditation on food and activism. It went on to earn Eater's Best Cookbook of 2017. The San Francisco Chronicle lauded it as one of their picks for best cookbooks of 2017 and The Village Voice included it on their list 2017’s Best Food Books for Woke Readers (and Eaters).

Turshen was hired right out of college, by the television producer for whom she had interned and worked, to serve as assistant to a writer who had been hired to write the companion book for a PBS travel show about food and cooking. (Queery podcast, 19:40) The job was in Spain, and Turshen bought a one-way ticket there. When the writer dropped out of the project, Turshen was afforded the opportunity to write the book herself, and she did. Next, she co-authored and otherwise collaborated on approximately ten cookbooks, ranging from a Korean cookbook to a Vietnamese cookbook to a cookbook about breads from around the world (Queery podcast, 30:40), supplementing her meager income by working as a private chef for wealthy clients. (Queery podcast, 25:26) Using her experiences, Turshen published her first solo book of recipes and stories in September 2016. (Queery podcast, 28:35)

In 2016, Turshen released her first solo cookbook, Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs. It was listed as one of The New York Times' best cookbooks of that year, one of NPR's best cookbooks of that year, and one of the best cookbooks for holiday giving, according to the Boston Globe.

Turshen is married to Design Sponge founder Grace Bonney. The couple lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and had a vacation home in Ulster County, New York. In 2014, they and their dogs moved into the vacation home, an 1850s farmhouse, full-time.

Julia Turshen (born 1985) is an American cookbook author, food writer, cook, and food equity advocate. She lectures on food and home cooking and has published four solo books on the subject, having worked on many others in collaboration or as a ghostwriter, as she was for Gwyneth Paltrow, Dana Cowin, and Mario Batali. She hosts the podcast Keep Calm and Cook On and writes a monthly column in Food & Wine called The Interview. She has written for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, and Bon Appétit. She serves on the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board and is the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), a digital directory of people of color, women, and non-binary individuals in food. She also regularly provides meals for Citizen Action New York, which led to her 2016 appointment as developer of the organization's food team.