Osayi Endolyn

Title: Contributor

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Education: M.F.A. in Writing, Savannah College of Art and Design; B.A. in French with a minor in Afro-American Studies, UCLA

Expertise: Food, culture, identity

- Named to Southern Living's "30 Women Moving Southern Food Forward"
- Co-author of The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food

Experience

Osayi Endolyn is a James Beard Award-winning writer whose work explores food and identity. She has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Eater, Food & Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure and the Oxford American. She's a regular contributor to food-centered storytelling on TV and audio platforms. Osayi is co-author of the national bestseller, The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, with Marcus Samuelsson.

She appears in Chef's Table and Ugly Delicious on Netflix, and The Next Thing You Eat on Hulu. She's featured on NPR's 1A, the Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry, The Splendid Table with Francis Lam, Special Sauce with Ed Levine and The Sporkful podcast, for which the team won a Webby Award.

Her essays on subjects such as the complicated origins of American fried chicken and the experience of dining out as a Black woman in the collections You and I Eat the Same and Women on Food have been widely celebrated. Her writing is featured in African/American: Making the Nation's Table by the Museum of Food and Drink, as part of the historic exhibit's Legacy Quilt.

Osayi earned her B.A. in French from UCLA, where she also minored in Afro-American studies, and her M.F.A. in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of the UC Berkeley—11th Hour Food & Farming Journalism Fellowship, was named to Southern Living's list of "30 Women Moving Southern Food Forward" and has served in multiple editor roles. Osayi is on the board of trustees for the Edna Lewis Foundation and Radical Xchange, and worked with PepsiCo's inaugural Dig In, an initiative in support of Black-owned restaurants.

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