Fun Facts Friday: M.F.K. Fisher

M.F.K. Fisher (3 July, 1908 – 22 June, 1992) was a food writer and translator. Ms. Fisher believed that eating well was one of the “arts of life”.

Books by M.F.K. Fisher*

1. The author was delivered at home in Albion, Michigan  as Mare Frances Kennedy to Rex and Edith. Her father wanted to name her Independencia if she would have been born on the 4^th of July.
   Her other was strongly against the notion.
2. Rex Kennedy, was co-owner and editor of the Albion Evening Recorder newspaper.
3. The family moved around while Rex was trying to buy an orange grove, the finally settled in Whittier, California where he bought a controlling interest in the Whittier News. The family did buy a house on a thirteen acres lot which had an orange grove.
4. Ms. Fisher didn’t’ like school, and barely graduated college. She loved to read, however, and her informal education has a greater impact on her writing career than the formal one.
5. Ms. Fisher’s career spanned more than six decades. She wrote 15 books, and hundreds of stories for The New Yorker. Ms. Fisher translated French gastronomist Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin‘s book The Physiology of Taste, a screenplay, a children’s book, and many travelogues.
6. Throughout her life, Ms. Fisher lived in California, France, and Switzerland.
7. Ms Fisher helped start the Napa Valley Wine Library, as well as taught several food and wine classes.
8. Julia Child, a close friend, called her a “sensuous writer”, English-American poet W.H. Auden called her “America’s greatest writer, and her good friend Chef James Beard was also quoted saying Ms. Fisher was  “a goddess, Juno maybe, who descends to earth now and then.”
9. Ms. Fisher is credited with creating the “food essay” genre.
10. Her 1942 book, How to Cook a Wolf, is focused on how to survive during wartime filled with essays and wartime-practical recipes of cooking pigeons and hares.  The author also advises the reader to borrow money and spent it on coarse vegetables, grain cereal, and meat, then ground them all up into a sludge that you can eat for a week.

Books by M.F.K. Fisher*

Zohar – Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account