“Leahy is at once an expressive, talented writer and an outstanding, accomplished cook with a great palate — an unusual combination.”—Leslie Brenner, Cooks Without Borders

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the short story

After years cooking on the line at restaurants across the US, Kate started writing about food and wine. Her first book, A16 Food + Wine, received the IACP Cookbook of the Year award and the Julia Child First Book award. Since then, she has co-authored more than a dozen books on food and wine. She also co-hosts the podcast Everything Cookbooks.

(photo credit: John Lee)

THE LONG STORY

After cooking in restaurants for a handful of years after college, I attended Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to get used to sitting still long enough to write, edit, rewrite, and repeat. (Sitting still remains the hardest part.) In 2008, A16 Food + Wine, my first book, launched my publishing adventures.*

My nonfiction focus is books on food, wine, and history. I visited the tea-growing areas of Myanmar while researching the Burma Superstar cookbook and traversed Armenia while writing Lavash. It was while working on Lavash that my co-authors and I traveled from Armenia into Nagorno Karabakh, a place known to Armenians as Artsakh. It was heartbreaking to see Artsakh get destroyed by war in 2020, and again in 2023. (Our team put together a fundraising publication to help resettlement efforts.)

On a lighter note, 2020 marked the release of La Buvette, a book I co-wrote with Camille Fourmont. It followed the story of Camille’s charming wine bar in Paris. After La Buvette came two more books about food and wine, including Wine Style, my first solo book, and Italian Wine, a book co-written with A16’s award-winning sommelier Shelley Lindgren.

In 2022, a few cookbook writers and I started a podcast helping people navigate the world of cookbook publishing. Since then, it’s had more than 100k+ downloads, and counting.

Apart from cookbooks, I also write fiction. I’m at work on a novel set in Northern California that combines the mutli-POV perspectives of BAD SUMMER PEOPLE with the eerie mountain backdrop of THE GUIDE.

*For an interview about how I got my start in food, see Georgia Freedman’s Substack The California Table

NONFICTION BOOKS (from most recent)

  • Italian Wine : The History, Regions, and Grapes of an Iconic Wine Country (Ten Speed Press, August 2023), co-author with Shelley Lindgren

  • Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes (Ten Speed Press, 2021) solo author

  • La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris (Ten Speed Press, 2020) co-author with Camille Fourmont

  • Lavash: The Bread that Launched 1000 Meals (Chronicle Books, 2019) co-author with John Lee and Ara Zada

  • Champagne: The essential guide to the wines, producers, and terroir of the iconic region (Ten Speed Press, 2017) co-author with Peter Liem

  • Burma Superstar: Addictive recipes from the crossroads of Southeast Asia (Ten Speed Press, 2017) co-author with Desmond Tan

  • The Seasoned Life: Food, Family, Faith & the Joy of Eating Well (Little, Brown, 2017) project manager/writer for Ayesha Curry

  • Cookie Love: More than 60 recipes and techniques for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary (Ten Speed Press, 2015) co-author with Mindy Segal

  • Insalata’s and Marinita’s: The tale of two restaurants (self-published) writer for Heidi Krahling

  • SPQR Modern Italian Food and Wine (Ten Speed Press, 2012) co-author with Shelley Lindgren and Matthew Accarrino

  • The Preservation Kitchen: The craft of making and cooking with pickles, preserves, and aigre-doux (Ten Speed Press, 2012) co-author with Paul Virant

  • A16 Food + Wine (Ten Speed Press, 2008) co-author with Shelley Lindgren and Nate Appleman

PRESS

Disclosure: This site includes a very few affiliate links, from which I might make enough to buy a cup of coffee