2015 Blog Awards: Best Writing Finalists

Kelsey Boyte About the Blog
My primary, and perhaps ONLY real mission with the blog is to create an environment where readers visit the site and leave feeling full, inspired, challenged, and encouraged that they do not journey their lives in isolation. It is the honor of my personal and professional life to connect with people strewn about this big crazy world who share similar passions, interests, and goals. Together, we can be better, do better, and share in the beauty that is a full, sometimes messy life. About Kelsey
I live in a red cabin in the Colorado Front Range with my husband Shaun and three-­legged pup, Tilly. I like deep-­sea fishing, high­-altitude hiking, good mezcal, and people who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Molly Wizenberg About the Blog
When I started Orangette in 2004, I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted a place to write, and to write about cooking. A couple of months in, I wrote about baking with sourdough starter that a friend had given me, and I suddenly had a vision of myself as a pioneer wife in a cotton bonnet in the early 1900s, riding across the plains in my covered wagon, cradling a bowl of sourdough starter that would allow me to sustain my family of, I don’t know, 12 children over the hard winter. This was very romantic stuff. And I thought: hey, that’s a STORY. The longer I work on Orangette, the more it becomes clear to me: I write not because I love to talk about food, but because I love stories. I love the shape that food gives to our everyday lives, the way it can illuminate who we are and the people close to us. About Molly
I’m the voice behind Orangette, named best food blog in the world by the London Times. My books, A Homemade Life: Stories__and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (Simon & Schuster, 2009), and Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage (Simon & Schuster, 2014), were both New York Times bestsellers. My work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Saveur, The Washington Post, O, and The Art of Eating, and I co-host the food-and-comedy podcast Spilled Milk, with Matthew Amster-Burton. I live with my husband Brandon Pettit in Seattle with our daughter June, and together, we own and run the restaurants Delancey and Essex.

Cara Nicoletti About the Blog
Yummy Books recreates the meals found in classic literature, popular fiction, children’s books, and poetry, tapping into the deep connection that exists between reading and eating. Recipes and books serve as both the backbone of the blog as well as the jumping off point for talking about a million other things, tiny and huge. About Cara
I’m Cara, a writer and third-generation butcher living in Brooklyn, NY. I’m the author of the literary food blog yummy-books.com, and my first book, Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books, will be out August 18 from Little, Brown & Co.

Imen McDonnell About the Blog
Farmette is a diary of my adventures in embarking on a second life where nearly everything that made up my former identity was replaced with a new set of circumstances. It is a blog about leaving behind a career, a city, a nation, and a slew of family and friends when I fell in love with a man, a farm, a country, and its traditions. About Imen
In a former life, I spent her days working in broadcast production while living in Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles. Love brought me to Ireland, where I traded in my Weitzman’s for Wellingtons and the sweet smell of scones (and slurry.) I live with my husband and son on our family farm in rural Ireland.

Sarah Searle About the Blog
The Yellow House is a popular collection of recipes, stories, and essays focusing on home cooking and food, culture, rural life and economy, gardening, and travel. I have degrees in public health and politics, and my writing on food, cooking, culture, and rural life reflects this broader background. About Sarah
I’m a rural Virginia and Washington, DC–based writer. I’ve written for Modern Farmer, Flavor, Food52, and Kinfolk, and my work has been featured in the New York Times’ Dining section staff’s (discontinued) “What We’re Reading” column, SAVEUR’s “Sites We Love”, the Huffington Post Taste section, The Guardian’s food section, Apartment Therapy’s “The Kitchn,” and the Williams-Sonoma website and catalogue.