Dr. Jessica B. Harris is a culinary historian and the author of twelve critically acclaimed books documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora, including High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, which was transformed into a four-part Netflix docuseries in 2021. My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award. Her most recent book is Vintage Postcards from the African World: In the Dignity of their Work and the Joy of Their Play. Harris is professor emerita at Queens College, CUNY, and holds an AB from Bryn Mawr College; an MA in French literature from Queens College, CUNY; a Licence ès Lettres from the Université de Nancy, France; and a doctorate in performance studies from New York University. She was the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair at Dillard University in New Orleans. Harris has received many honors, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Amelia Award from the New York Culinary Historians, and the Carol DeMasters Service to Food Journalism Award from the Association of Food Journalists. Harris was named to the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America in 2010, her cookbooks were inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2019, and in 2020 she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the same organization. Harris was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2021 by TIME magazine. 

Mark Essig is the author of Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig and Edison & the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Gravy. He holds a PhD in history from Cornell and now works as a science editor at the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies, part of NC State University.

Lolis Eric Elie is a New Orleans–born, Los Angeles–based writer and filmmaker. His television credits include work on The Chi, The Man in the High Castle, and the HBO series Treme. A former columnist for the Times-Picayune, Elie is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country and coproducer and writer of the documentary based on that book. A contributing writer to the Oxford American, he has also been published in Gourmet, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Bon Appetit.

Melissa Guerra is a self-taught culinary expert and food historian, specializing in Texas regional, Mexican, and Latin American cuisine. Her cookbook Dishes from the Wild Horse Desert: Norteño Cuisine of South Texas was a finalist for a James Beard Award and for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award. After acquiring an MFA in creative writing through the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Guerra went on to write and publish articles about life along the United States–Mexican border. She is also the host of the Kitchen Wrangler blog and YouTube channel. Guerra has taught food history at the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio, Texas, and Hyde Park, New York.

Zella Palmer is an author, professor, filmmaker, curator, scholar, and the chair and director of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program in African American Material Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana. Palmer is committed to documenting and preserving the legacy of African American, Creole, Indigenous, and Latinx culinary history. As the chair of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program, Palmer filmed and produced The Story of New Orleans Creole Cooking: The Black Hand in the Pot documentary. In 2020, under Palmer’s leadership, Dillard University launched a food studies minor, one of two accredited academic food studies programs at an HBCU. Palmer’s latest publications, Recipes and Remembrances of Fair Dillard: 1869–2019 and Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, share some of her rich research. She received the 2018 Cultural Bearer Award from the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, was included in New Orleans Magazine’s 2020 People To Watch, and was a 2022 Dine Diaspora Black Women in Food Trailblazer honoree. Palmer hosts the Culture and Flavor podcast on Heritage Radio Network. 

Ryan Mitchell, is the son of Ed Mitchell, an American pitmaster who was inducted into both the Black BBQ Hall of Fame and the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame in 2022. Ryan is the business brain behind his father’s brand. From a very young age, Ryan began working in the Mitchell family restaurant. Although barbeque was the only way of life he knew, Ryan pictured a different path for his career, attending East Carolina University to play football and earn a degree in economics. After eight years in commercial and investment banking, he left his 60-hour-a-week desk job and returned to his roots to pursue his passion. Ryan credits his father, grandfather, and uncles Aubrey and Stevie Mitchell for giving him the skills to lead the next generation of barbeque.

Toby Rodriguez is from Poche Bridge, a small Cajun and Creole community in South Louisiana, where he learned le boucherie, the butchering process culturally specific to this pocket of the Gulf Coast. Rodriguez demonstrates its process and teaches its fundamentals both at home and across the United States in such far-flung places as Chapel Hill, Brooklyn, Detroit, and Homer, Alaska. Rodriguez has traveled to Italy to teach at The Institute for Gastronomic Science and has cooked for Magnus Nilsson of Fäviken in Sweden. He is a member of Slow Food New Orleans and traveled as a delegate to Denver for Slow Meat and to Torino, Italy, for Terra Madre. Rodriguez is also a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance.