Early on in my journalism career, I made a life-changing discovery: If you want to get people to open up, turn the conversation to food.

It is one of the rare topics we all have something to say about.

         
Susan Puckett is a James Beard-nominated food journalist and editor who has authored or collaborated on more than a dozen books. She was the food editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for nearly 19 years and today, as a freelance writer and editor, contributes to its Food section and other media outlets. 

As a rookie reporter for her hometown newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson, Mississippi, she wrote stories about working gristmills, cushaw melons, molasses-making and other fading food traditions around the state. The paper compiled those pieces in a book, A Cook’s Tour of Mississippi, with an introduction by famed Mississippi writer Willie Morris.

This experience led her to study food and nutrition in-depth at Iowa State University, where she wrote her second book, “A Cook’s Tour of Iowa.” Noted American regional food writers Jane and Michael Stern praised it as “an account of the way Americans really eat…a rarity within gastronomic literature.”

Since then, Susan has been a staff food writer and editor for The (Cleveland, OH)  Plain Dealer and South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and written about food for numerous media outlets around the country, including Eating Well, CNN, Plate, Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic Traveler, The Local Palate, Saveur, and The Food Network.com. 

While at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she and her staff garnered dozens of awards for writing and editing from the James Beard Foundation and the Association of Food Journalists. 

After leaving the paper, she traveled extensively through the Mississippi Delta to produce a travelogue with recipes called “Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey Through the Soul of the South” (UGA Press, 2013), which the Georgia Center for the Book named one of “Ten Books All Georgians Should Read.” After its release, she co-taught a magazine class at her alma mater, Ole Miss, and helped students produce an award-winning magazine about Delta food culture and nutrition issues. She also chaired a food conference for the Association of Food Journalists at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, and arranged an overnight side trip to Clarksdale, Miss., to give food writers from around the country an authentic taste of the blues.

She has since turned her focus to collaborating with chefs and other professionals on their books: Daron “Farmer D” Joffe on “Citizen Farmers” (Abrams, 2014); Steven Satterfield on “Root to Leaf” (Harper Wave, 2015); Eddie Hernandez on (“Turnip Greens and Tortillas” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018); Tenney Flynn on “The Deep End of Flavor” (Gibbs Smith, 2019); and  the popular blogger Suzy Karadsheh on “The Mediterranean Dish Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter, 2022) — a New York Times Bestseller!

Besides books, Susan has also worked extensively with The Old Mill at Pigeon Forge in helping them tell their story for an updated website and rebranding effort, and with bestselling cookbook author Anne Byrn on the development of a Substack newsletter, Between the Layers. As a longtime advisory board member of DIG Development in Gardening, a nonprofit dedicated to helping vulnerable communities in Africa build sustainable community gardens, she has helped organize chef-driven live and virtual fund-raising events with chefs and edit annual “cookzines” featuring their no-waste recipes.

Susan lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her journalist husband, Ralph Ellis. When she’s not at the computer or walking around the neighborhood with her greyhound, Zena, she can usually be found in the kitchen testing recipes for new projects or just for fun to share with food-loving friends at weekly condo get-togethers.