Cookbook Lovers: Cookbooking — A Celebration of the Cookbook
Calling all cookbook enthusiasts, food lovers, and wine-curious home (or professional) chefs! Whether you love to cook, sip, or simply page through a beautifully crafted cookbook, the Cookbook Lovers Club is for you.
This special edition gathering will be the ultimate celebration: instead of one cookbook, we’re celebrating all of them!
Our centerpiece is Cookbooking: A Fan’s Guide, Debbie Berne’s joyful pop-history of the genre — a book about the books we splash, dog-ear, annotate in the margins, and hand down with the stains still on them. Debbie, who passed away last year, designed hundreds of cookbooks before she wrote her own, and this evening is a celebration of the genre she loved.
Kate Leahy, cookbook author and host of the Everything Cookbooks podcast, will lead a conversation with Bebe Black Carminito, author of The Curated Board, and Dianne Jacob, whose Will Write for Food is the standard guide to writing about food. Expect talk of cookbooks as a form: the one that made you, how we actually use them, and what we lose when a recipe becomes a link.
And because the community cookbook is the most communal thing the genre has ever produced, we’re making one. You’ll receive an invitation to send us a favorite recipe when you register and we’ll print everyone’s onto cards. On the night you’ll design your own little community cookbook to take home or gift to that special someone for the holidays.
Your ticket includes:
A conversation with Kate Leahy, Bebe Carminito and Dianne Jacob
Bites cooked from recipes submitted by the room, paired with Book Society’s special house wine
Materials for creating your own take-home community cookbook
A holiday table of cookbooks curated by our panelists as their top recommended gifts
Book signings with Kate, Bebe and Dianne
A limited number of copies will be available for purchase at the event.
About the Panel
Kate Leahy is the co-host of Everything Cookbooks and had written more than thirteen books on food and wine, including Italian Wine, Wine Style, Lavash, and Burma Superstar. Her first book, A16 Food + Wine, won the IACP best book of the year and the Julia Child first book award. Her latest book, Here for the Dips, is out May 2027 with Ten Speed Press. She released an Everything Cookbooks episode on Cookbooking this fall. Check it out here.
Bebe Black Carminito is a cookbook author, food stylist, recipe developer, content creator and cooking teacher at The Civic Kitchen. Her debut cookbook, The Curated Board: Inspired Platters & Spreads for Any Occasion, was published in September 2024. Her earlier creative contributions to cookbooks include The California Date Cookbook, styling for Faith Kramer’s celebrated 52 Shabbats, and assisting on Micah Siva’s NOSH. Bebe attended the San Francisco Cooking School and started her culinary career at A16, an acclaimed restaurant in San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco in her teeny-tiny apartment with her husband and best friend, David Carminito.
Dianne Jacob coaches food writers on how to get a cookbook published, pitch freelance stories, start newsletters, and improve the quality and effectiveness of their writing. She specializes in book proposals. Dianne is the author of the multiple award-winning Will Write for Food: Pursue Your Passion and Bring Home the Dough Writing Recipes, Cookbooks, Blogs and More. She has co-authored two pizza cookbooks with chef Craig Priebe and has won awards for her food writing in publications including The Washington Post, Food & Wine and Lucky Peach. Dianne has judged cookbooks for the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals, as well as national magazine awards. Previously a journalist and a newspaper, magazine and publishing company editor-in-chief, she writes a free monthly newsletter for food writers. More at diannej.com.