Cooked Up

Food can bring together families, communities, and cultures. It is the essence of life and yet our relationships with one another can be most fraught at the dinner table. This perpetually fascinating subject has inspired a unique collection of fictionincluding flash fiction, essay, short stories, and even a "e;stoku"e; (amalgam of short story and haiku)from a wonderfully diverse and international group of authors.The authors in the anthology include Elaine Chiew, Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni, Rachel J. Fenton, Diana Ferraro, Vanessa Gebbie, Pippa Goldschmidt, Sue Guiney, Patrick J. Holland, Roy Kesey, Charles Lambert, Krys Lee, Stefani Nellen, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Ben Okri, Angie Pelekidis, Susannah Rickards, and Nikesh Shukla.Elaine Chiew is a London-based writer who has won several prizes for her short stories and flash fiction. She was included in One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories. Many of her stories revolve around food.Chitra Banarjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet, activist, and teacher of writing. She has been published in many magazines and her writing has been included in over fifty anthologies.Ben Okri has published eight novels, including The Famished Road and Starbook, as well as collections of poetry, short stories, and essays. He has won numerous international prizes.Pippa Goldschmidt writes long and short fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Her PhD in astronomy inspired her first novel The Falling Sky, about a female astronomer who discovers the Universe and loses her mind.