In 2026, Arlington Reads turns 20 and Arlington Public Library will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States by looking at American life, history and culture through the lens of food.
Arlington Reads Stirs It Up
In 2026, the library’s premier author talk program Arlington Reads will stir it up with eight award-winning cookbook authors and food celebrities, celebrating the intersection of food and culture.
Additional library programs will feature live cooking demonstrations, local “Chef Talks,” a community cookbook with favorite family recipes and a “Great Arlington Bakeoff.”
The author series will examine the various aspects of food—how it crafts community, dishes up our collective history and cultivates cultural connections.
The delectable menu of authors will consist of:
- Anthropologist Dr. Ashanté M. Reese (February 1)
- Ecologist and greenhouse gas accountant Mark Easter (February 25)
- Indian-American food journalist Priya Krishna (March 25)
- Culinary lifestyle TV host of The Splendid Table Francis Lam (April 21)
- Food and wine expert and star of Netflix’s Queer Eye Antoni Porowski (June 24)
- Cake and baking celebrity of the American South Anne Byrn (July 15)
- Culinary food historian Jessica B. Harris (November 4)
- Bermudian-American social media personality and baker B. Dylan Hollis (December 5).
Arlington Reads is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the Arlington Public Library (FOAL). Other County and community partners include Arlington Video Group, independent bookstore One More Page Books and Arlington Food Assistance Center.
2026 Author Book List
2026 Author Menu
Dr. Ashanté M. Reese (February 1)
Dr. Ashanté M. Reese is a writer, anthropologist, and associate professor of African and African Diaspora at The University of Texas at Austin.
Reese will discuss the intersection of critical food studies and Black geographies, examining the ways Black people produce and navigate food-related spaces while navigating inequity.
Her first book "Black Food Geographies: Race, Self- Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C." won the 2020 Best Monograph Prize from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the 2020 Margaret Mead Award jointly awarded by the Association of American Anthropologists and the Society for Applied Anthropology.
Mark Easter (February 25)
Mark Easter is the author of the award-winning popular science book "The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos," published by Patagonia Books. In it, he explores the question “Can we eat our way out of the climate crisis?” In 2025, The Blue Plate was awarded an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal and was a James Beard Award Nominee and finalist for The Colorado Book Award.
Mark is an ecologist and greenhouse gas accountant who has researched the carbon emissions from food, forestry and fiber in academia and private industry for more than two decades. He spent much of his career working with farmers, ranchers, foresters and scientists around the world, researching how historical and modern agriculture contributed to the warming climate, and identifying both new and old farming and ranching methods that not only reduce the dangerous climate emissions behind our daily plates of food, but reverse those emissions wherever possible by drawing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere back into the Earth’s ecosystems.
Mark is a longtime resident of Fort Collins, CO, and spent most of his work career at Colorado State University, from which he retired in 2023 but continues working as an affiliate scientist. He loves to read, work in his garden, cook, hike, backcountry ski and spend time with his wife and their Australian Shepherd.
Priya Krishna (March 25)
Priya Krishna is a food reporter, video host and former restaurant critic at the New York Times, as well as the New York Times best-selling author of multiple cookbooks, including “Indian-ish” and “Priya's Kitchen Adventures: A Cookbook for Kids.”
During her early career, Krishna worked at the food magazine Lucky Peach and was a contributing writer and video host at Bon Appétit. Krishna has been nominated for awards by the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021.
Francis Lam (April 21)
Francis Lam is the host of The Splendid Table, produced by American Public Media.
Lam is the former Eat columnist for The New York Times Magazine and is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Clarkson Potter, a division within Penguin Random House that is a leader in cookbook publishing. For two seasons, Lam was a regular judge on Bravo’s hit show, Top Chef Masters. An award-winning writer, Lam has written for numerous publications, including Gourmet, Bon Appetít and Food & Wine.
Lam will be joined in conversation by former Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.
Antoni Porowski (June 24)
Antoni Porowski is a New York Times bestselling author, Emmy-winning producer/TV personality and a globally-renowned culinary expert with a lifelong passion for food.
Porowski most recently starred in and was the executive producer of National Geographic’s docuseries "No Taste Like Home," published by Gordon Ramsay's Studio Ramsay Global. The show explores the diverse cultural heritages of global celebrities by way of their ancestors’ culinary traditions, techniques and experiences. "No Taste Like Home" received a Critics’ Choice Real TV award for Best Structured Series in 2025, and was also nominated for a Cinema Eye Honors Award as well as two Realscreen Awards.
He is also known as the food and wine expert on Netflix’s award-winning series "Queer Eye," which recently wrapped production on its tenth and final season. The series has won twelve Emmy Awards, including six consecutive wins for “Outstanding Structured Reality Program,” breaking the category record for most wins. As a producer on the series, the 75th Emmy Awards marked the first time that Porowski was recognized with an Emmy trophy in his name, along with his co-hosts.
Amongst other television projects and endeavors, Porowski is the author of two cookbooks—“Antoni in the Kitchen” and “Antoni: Let's Do Dinner.”
He is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights everywhere, especially in his family’s native Poland. Porowski serves on the Food Council of City Harvest and is a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations World Food Programme. These organizations respectively aim to end hunger in New York City, where he resides, and across the world.
Anne Byrn (July 15)
Anne Byrn is an American cookbook author and the former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Tennessean.
Byrn is a New York Times bestselling food writer and author of “American Cake.”
Her latest book, “Baking in the American South,” was a finalist for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award and was named one of 12 Essential Cookbooks for 2025 by the American Library Association.
Byrn’s previous titles include “The Cake Mix Doctor,” deemed one of Southern Living’s top 100 cookbooks of all time.
Jessica B. Harris (November 4)
Jessica B. Harris is an American culinary historian, college professor, cookbook author and journalist. Harris is professor emerita at Queens College, City University of New York, where she taught for 50 years and is also the author of 15 books, including “Braided Heritage.”
She has won two James Beard Foundation Awards, including for Lifetime Achievement in 2020, and her book “High on the Hog” was adapted in 2021 as a four-part Netflix series.
Dylan Hollis (December 5)
Benjamin Dylan Hollis is a Bermudian-American social media personality, baker and author of “Baking Yesteryear” and “Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip.”
Dylan Hollis is a baking entertainer, bestselling author and viral social media personality known for breathing new life into forgotten recipes.
Born and raised in Bermuda, Hollis pursued jazz piano at the University of Wyoming before stumbling into baking and internet fame during the pandemic.
What began as a quirky video exploring an old cookbook quickly turned into a phenomenon, with millions tuning in to watch him whip up everything from potato chip cookies to tomato soup cake.