#131 The Flavor of Trauma: A Food Memoir Wrapped Around a Family Story Featuring Bonny Reichert

Bonny Reichert is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist. She has been an editor at Today’s Parent and Chatelaine magazines, and a columnist and regular contributor to The Globe and Mail newspaper. When she turned forty, a now-or-never feeling made her quit her job to enroll in culinary school, and she’s been exploring her relationship with food on the page ever since. Bonny was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and lives in Toronto with her husband and little dog, Bruno. HOW TO SHARE AN EGG won the 2022 Dave Greber Book Award for social justice writing.

 

• Bonny’s journey from journalism to food writing and memoir [2:23]

• The inspiration behind How to Share an Egg and how Bonny blended personal and historical narratives for a universal message [3:17]

• How Bonny’s Holocaust-surviving father shaped her understanding of food, resilience, and storytelling [3:45]

• The power of a declarative sentence, key incident, conversation or experience [7:22]

• How Bonny restructured her book chapter by chapter for a stronger narrative arc [8:30]

• The meaning of the phrase coping was containment [18:11]

• The role of metaphors in good writing [20:01]

• Why Bonny believes writing for the reader [27:58]

• Advice for writers tackling their own personal and family histories [36:06]

 

Connect with Bonny Reichert

http://www.bonnyreichert.com 

 

Subscribe to my newsletter: 

bonnyreichert.substack.com

 

Find How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty on Estelle’s Bookshop 

https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-share-an-egg-a-true-story-of-hunger-love-and-plenty-bonny-reichert/21415607?aid=98827&ean=9780593599167&listref=authors-who-have-appeared-on-freelance-writing-direct

Bonny and her Father on NPR with Scott Simon

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/25/nx-s1-5185933/bonny-reicherts-how-to-share-an-egg-is-a-memoir-about-food-and-family

Bonny’s article on Jane Friedman’s Site

How to Find Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc (There May Be More Than One)

https://janefriedman.com/finding-your-narrative-arc/

Episode Mentioned in This Episode

Episode #87 Writing Memoir that Reads Like a Novel and Captivates on Every Page Featuring Joanna Rakoff

https://estelleserasmus.com/87-writing-memoir-that-reads-like-a-novel-and-captivates-on-every-page-featuring-joanna-rakoff/

 

Estelle Eras