Bryant Terry

"This young food activist makes southern cooking healthy and cool."

--New York Times

Bryant Terry is a chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. In regard to his work, Bryant’s mentor Alice Waters says, “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.”

Bryant is the author of the critically acclaimed Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, which was named one of the best vegetarian/vegan cookbooks of the last 25 years by Cooking Light Magazine. Bryant also authored The Inspired Vegan, and he coauthored Grub (with Anna Lappe), which The New York Times called “ingenious.” Bryant’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Food and Wine, Gourmet, Sunset, O: The Oprah Magazine, Essence, Yoga Journal, and Vegetarian Times among many other publications. As an exclusive speaker signed with the Lavin Agency, Bryant presents frequently around the country as a keynote speaker at community events and colleges, including Brown, Columbia, NYU, Smith, Stanford, and Yale.

Bryant is the host of Urban Organic--a multi-episode web series that he co-created--and he was a co-host of the public television series, The Endless Feast. He is a featured expert in the documentary Soul Food Junkies and the PBS educational film Nourish. Bryant has made dozens of national television and radio appearances, including being a guest on The Martha Stewart Show, Emeril Green, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, The Splendid Table, and The Tavis Smiley Show.

Bryant’s education efforts and activism have earned him numerous accolades. In 2012, he was chosen by The U.S. State Department as one of 80 American chefs to be a part of its new American Chef Corps. That same year TheRoot.com included him on its list of “100 most influential African Americans,” TheGrio.com included him on its list of “100 African Americans making history today,” and the San Francisco Bay Guardian named him “Best Cookbook Cheftivist” in the Bay Area. In 2011 Bryant was included in Ebony Magazine’s “Power 100 list,” and in 2009, The New York Times magazine featured him among a handful of “food fighters.” From 2008-2010 Bryant was a fellow of the Food and Society Fellows Program, a national Program of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Bryant was selected as one of the “Hot 20 Under 40” in the San Francisco Bay Area magazine 7x7 in 2008,.and in 2007 he received the inaugural Natural Gourmet Institute Award for Excellence in Health-Supportive Education along with author and Educator Marion Nestle.

In 2002 Bryant founded b-healthy (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth), a multi-year initiative in New York City designed to empower youth to be more active in fighting for a more sustainable food system.

Bryant graduated from the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. He holds an M.A. in History from NYU and a B.A. with honors in English from Xavier University of Louisiana. He lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughter.

www.bryant-terry.com