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Red Emma’s

Alicia Kennedy Presents "On Eating," in conversation with Anny Gaul

Wednesday, April 22nd 2026

7:00 pm

Red Emma's

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As a girl, I ate like a king. So begins beloved author and journalist Alicia Kennedy’s captivating new book. "On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites" is a deeply personal work about being a girl who loved to eat but worried that cooking could derail her life. Would it mean ceaseless domesticity and service? Do we have to eat and cook “like a man” to have our appetites taken seriously? Or can we eat and cook in a way that is true to ourselves, that roots us in the places we’ve called home, and that helps define our politics and ethics? Join us for what is sure to be a captivating discussion with Alicia and cultural historian, Anny Gaul, author of the lovely new work, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato."

From eating her grandma’s lamb chops and picking apples with her mom on Long Island, to an interest in chocolate leading her to open a vegan microbakery and mushroom reporting in Puerto Rico steering her toward the love of her life, Kennedy has always been guided by curiosity and a hunger for flavor and experience. On Eating teaches us that we don’t have to choose between what is delicious and what can sustain our planet and ourselves. But it’s also about the deep hunger of loss, grief, families, and the stories we tell each other in order to survive.

On Eating is not only a provocative bildungsroman and a celebration of desire, but it also challenges each of us to consider our own relationship with food and how our need to eat—to live—impacts the world.

Alicia Kennedy is a writer from New York based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her weekly newsletter on food culture, politics, and media, “From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy,” has been mentioned by The New York Times, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, W, Food52, Coveteur, and Vogue Australia. Her writing has appeared in Eater, British Vogue, The Guardian, and Harper’s Bazaar. Kennedy has appeared on Good Morning America, the BBC World Service, and many more radio shows and podcasts to talk about issues of food media, culture, and meat consumption.

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