It’s very likely that you know chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton for one of two things: her iconic Manhattan restaurant Prune (RIP), or her soaring and fearless 2012 debut memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, which told the story of her less-than-conventional upbringing in a converted silk mill in rural Pennsylvania and her rise to the top of the New York culinary scene.
In her latest memoir, Next of Kin, Hamilton takes a different tack, recounting—among other things—the deaths of two of her brothers, a brutal falling-out with her sister, her complex relationship with her father, and the confusing peace of coming to care for her once-feared, now-elderly mother. Hamilton’s voice is as singular and rollicking as ever in Next of Kin, but it feels rare and special to have it applied to the kind of complicated family history that so many of us only come to confront in adulthood (if at all).
This week, Vogue spoke to Hamilton about moving away from food writing; her daily routine as a wife, dog owner, and empty-nester; challenging conventional wisdoms around writing about family; and letting “the light show up at the end” of a dark revision process.
Vogue: How does it feel to release a project that’s not as food-centric as your previous ones?
Gabrielle Hamilton: I feel good about it. It was kind of an experiment for myself, or a sort of quiet and nagging question in my own mind that I’ve been thinking about for some time: “Are you a writer, Gabrielle, or are you a food writer?” Not just a food writer—but I wanted to know if I could write a book that didn’t have food or recipes in it, and the jury’s out. I mean, I’ve done it, but we’ll see! In all the food writing I’ve ever done, the real stories are always sort of lurking underneath or knocking on the walls of the room, so finally, it was like, “Let’s just get the food out of here and get to the real story.”
What does life look like for you these days with the book newly out?
Well, as you know, book publishing has changed tremendously since the last time I did it, so you don’t really go on tour very much—it’s too expensive for the publisher. So you do a lot of podcasting. I think the plan is to have conversations like that. And then I teach writing at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia every fall, so that’s on my schedule right now. I run Prune as a kind of restaurant-by-appointment, so that’s my life: empty nest, two college-aged kids, and my cherished, beloved wife and my usually-cherished dog. Sometimes I get annoyed at the dog, but that’s the package over here.
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