Red Truck Bakery Cookbook events
Winchester, Virginia: WMRA Books & Brews live
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 7 pm: Join Brian Noyes and WMRA / NPR station of the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia for a live conversation and book signing at Winchester Brew Works at 320 N. Cameron Street, Winchester, Virginia, from 7 pm to 8 pm with a book signing to follow. More details soon here.
Red Truck Bakery cookbook at Mount Vernon
Completed event: My cookbook tour reboot started at George Washington’s Mount Vernon on Sunday, November 10, 2024. Engaging a non-stop crowd, I signed both cookbooks and chatted about (and sampled) Martha Washington’s Great Cake, featured in the Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook.
Earlier book appearances and events
Eudora Welty House and Garden, Jackson MS
George Washington’s Mansion at Mount Vernon, VA
"The Key Ingredient with Sheri Castle" PBS show, NC
WMRA Public Radio, Shenandoah Valley VA
Garden & Gun's Artist in Residence, Palmetto Bluff SC
Garden & Gun Club, Atlanta GA
Garden & Gun Magazine, Charleston SC
Buxton Books, Charleston SC
Vivian Howard’s Lenoir, Charleston SC
Billy Reid, Austin TX
Billy Reid, Birmingham AL
Billy Reid, Washington DC
Williams Sonoma, Birmingham AL
Williams Sonoma, Arlington VA
Williams Sonoma, Fairfax VA
Williams Sonoma, Charlottesville VA
Politics & Prose, Washington DC
National Press Club, Washington DC
University Club, Washingto, DC
Bold Fork Books, Washington DC
One More Page Books, Arlington VA
Old Town Books, Alexandria VA
Red Barn Mercantile, Alexandria VA
The Open Book, Warrenton VA
Orlean Volunteer Fire and Rescue, Orlean VA
Salamander Resort, Middleburg VA
Creme de la Creme, Middleburg VA
Nibblins Culinary, Winchester VA
The Library of Virginia, Richmond VA
The Governor’s Mansion, Richmond VA
RH Ballard, Little Washington VA
Birch Tree Books, Leesburg VA
Festival of the Book, Charlottesville VA
Texas Book Festival, Austin TX
Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington KY
Greensboro Bound Book Festival, Greensboro NC
Hilton Head Seafood Festival, Hilton Head SC
Foode, Fredericksburg VA
Duly Noted, Fredericksburg VA
McIntyre’s Books, Fearrington Village NC
Malaprop’s Bookstore, Asheville NC
Plott Hound Books, Burnsville NC
Square Books, Oxford MS
Lemuria Books, Jackson MS
The Garden District Bookshop, New Orleans LA
Parnassus Books, Nashville TN
Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville TN
Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati OH
The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus OH
Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington KY
A Cappella Books, Atlanta GA
Oblong Books, Millerton NY
Copperfield’s Books, Napa CA
River House Books, Carmel CA
The Book Larder, Seattle WA
Stone Soup Books, Waynesboro VA
Vinosity Wine Shop, Culpeper VA
Modern Homestead, Reedsville WV
Barnes & Noble bookstores throughout DC, VA, NC
Regional libraries in DC, VA, SC
My Red Truck Bakery cookbooks
To send a signed and personalized copy of The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook and the Red Truck Bakery Cookbook, order here. We’ll get it out quickly.
In Virginia, signed Red Truck Bakery cookbooks are available at the bookstore at George Washington’s Mount Vernon; stop by in person or order for shipping nationwide. Signed and personalized copies are also available in Little Washington at R.H. Ballard Shop & Gallery at 307 Main Street, Washington, VA, or order for shipping nationwide. And near Charlottesville, King Family Vineyards carries signed copies of both cookbooks. In Georgia, don't miss Alabama Booksmith—extraordinary purveyors of signed first edition books sold at regular publisher’s prices, including my two cookbooks—order for shipping nationwide.
My first book, Red Truck Bakery Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2018), is in its seventh printing. The new Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2022) is in its second printing, was named Best Cookbook by the American Legacy Book Awards, and highlights savory and sweet recipes with farmers market ingredients, with dishes from the bakery archives, my training at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, L’Academie de Cuisine near D.C., King Arthur Baking in Vermont, with chef Rick Bayless at a former convent in Oaxaca, Mexico, and through the teachings of my Southern grandmother in the mountains of North Carolina. See our Publishers Weekly starred review.
View my bakery story and gallery.
Howdy.
Here you’ll find my publication design work over three decades, along with the story of the rural Virginia bakery I started from scratch (and, combining the two careers, my two Clarkson Potter/ Penguin Random House cookbooks I authored). I’m continuing to design and write for publications; if you're here for those reasons, take a look at my portfolios and send me a note.
While the art director of the Washington Post, Smithsonian, and Preservation magazines during the week, I baked pies and breads on weekends in my Virginia Piedmont farmhouse and sold them out of an old red truck that I bought from designer Tommy Hilfiger. When a New York Times story sent 57,000 people to my fledgling bakery website after just two dozen hits the day before, I left publishing to launch the Red Truck Bakery on the edge of the Shenandoah Valley in rural Virginia. The bakery has received accolades from Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and many national publications, and ships thousands of items nationwide each year. The story I wrote for the 2024 Virginia Travel Guide about launching a beloved rural bakery with a national following is below.
I’m an advisor to the Jacques Pépin Foundation, and am a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and the James Beard Foundation. I am the author of the Red Truck Bakery Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2018) and The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2022). I’ve written for the Washington Post, Smithsonian, Preservation, Taste of the South, The Local Palate, Huffington Post, and Garden & Gun, and am at work on a third book. After 15 years, I sold the bakery in December, 2023; the Northern Virginia magazine story is here.
My publication design portfolio
During a Washington, D.C., career spanning thirty years, I was the art director of the Washington Post, Smithsonian, Preservation, Architecture, and Condé Nast's House & Garden magazines. I’ve designed magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs for The White House, The World Bank, National Geographic Books, Princeton Architectural Press, John Wiley & Sons, The Washington Post, The American Institute of Architects, Blair Publishers, North Carolina Pottery Center, and North Carolina State University’s Gregg Museum of Art + Design. I’ll continue to design publications.
View my design portfolios:
For more information or to say hey, send me an email.
New projects
Key West Sketches
Carey Winfrey, my former editor-in-chief at Smithsonian magazine, asked me to design his new book, Key West Sketches (Blair, September 19, 2023). Long America's most vibrant writers’ colony, Key West traces its writerly roots to Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Hersey, Richard Wilbur, James Merrill, and Elizabeth Bishop. More recently, Thomas McGuane, Judy Blume, Ann Beattie, Philip Caputo, Alison Lurie, and Meg Cabot have added their luster to the island’s literary heritage. This collection includes a treasure trove of more than sixty essays from the town’s best-known writers: those mentioned above and Lee Smith, Frank Deford, Phyllis Rose, Glenn Frankel, Joy Williams, Barbara Ehrenreich, Billy Collins, and many more. Available at your favorite bookstore and the usual online places.
My Garden & Gun cover story
A nearby town’s vague request for Mrs. Beavers’ long-lost caramel cake recipe, combined with fashion designer Billy Reid’s yearning to recreate a family heirloom, became my baking project and the cover story I wrote for Garden & Gun’s food issue. The story is here.
National Magazine Award
The 25th anniversary of our big win
On a small staff with a minuscule budget, I was the art director in a leaky National Trust for Historic Preservation basement designing Preservation magazine. Twenty-five years ago, in a grand ballroom in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, we won the big prize: the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.