“This is my favourite book of food writing in years.” — Naben Ruthnum, author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race

Thoughtful, wide-ranging essays exploring food as a source of pleasure, practical creativity, and sustenance

Food is the primary way andrea bennett connects with the world. They worked in the restaurant industry for a decade, and though they don’t eat much meat and can’t eat gluten, they take as much pleasure in food as Jeffrey Steingarten, Anthony Bourdain, or Guy Fieri. When they want to show someone they care, they cook them a meal.

Hearty follows bennett’s passion and curiosity into kitchens, gardens, fields, and factories, offering a compassionate and compelling perspective on food from seed to table. Combining journalism, cultural commentary, and personal reflection, Hearty dives deep into specific foods, such as chutney, carrots, and ice cream, but also explores appetite and desire in food media, the art of substitution, seed saving, and the triumphs and trials of being a home gardener, how the food system works (and doesn’t), and complex societal narratives around health and pleasure. Nuanced and non-prescriptive, Hearty is a feast that invites all food lovers to the table.

andrea bennett is a non-binary National Magazine Award–winning writer, editor, and illustrator who lives in Ayjoo mixw (Powell River), BC. Their first book of essays, Like a Boy but Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary (Arsenal Pulp Press), was a CBC Books’ pick for the top Canadian nonfiction of the year. Their first book of poetry, Canoodlers, was published by Nightwood in 2014. andrea’s poetry and non-fiction has been widely published in magazines and newspapers such as the Walrus, the Atlantic, Hazlitt, Maisonneuve, the Tyee, the Globe and Mail, Reader’s Digest, Vice, Geist, CV2, Grain, Fiddlehead, the Malahat Review, and Arc. With Kim Fu they co-host The Rough Puffs, a Great British Baking Show rewatch podcast.

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“Rigorous reportage and history exist alongside memoir in these exciting and enriching essays by andrea bennett. With no interest in being didactic, bennett thoughtfully explores questions around the cooking, production, and future of food. Smart, somehow both rigorous and fun, this is my favourite book of food writing in years.” — Naben Ruthnum, author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race

“Good memoir writing about food gets at sensory experience and tactile memories, yes. But bennett's essays on eating and feeding others open up the reader's mind to what makes the genre truly great: the act of staying fed being as frustrating as it is calming, and as revealing about inequality as it is nourishing to body and mind.” — Chantal Braganza, deputy editor, Food, Chatelaine

“The essays in Hearty will appeal to non-gardeners, gardening pros, and everyone in between. They’re effortless and interesting, and bennett’s fascination with the subject matter—all of it—is infectious.” — The BC Review