Author event! Bonny Reichert with Jeff Gordinier

Zibby's Bookshop is excited to welcome Bonny Reichert and Jeff Gordinier to celebrate Reichert's How to Share an Egg.

About the book:

Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.
Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Stepping into the kitchen to connect her past with her future, the author recounts the defining moments of her life in a poignant tale of scarcity and plenty: her colorful childhood in the restaurant business, the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef, and that life-altering visit to Poland. Whether it’s the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.
How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman’s search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother, and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done? This moving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.

About the speakers:

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.

Jeff Gordinier is a frequent contributor to publications such as Esquire, The New York Times, Food & Wine, Fast Company, Town & Country, Further, and Air Mail. A graduate of Princeton University, he is the author of the 2019 book Hungry, a portrait of chef René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. Jeff has appeared in the Jeong Kwan and Evan Funke episodes of the Netflix series Chef’s Table and in Phil Rosenthal's Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lauren Fonda, and their twin sons, Jasper & Wesley.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

1113 Montana Ave, 1113 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, United States