{"id":80941,"date":"2025-11-14T08:40:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=80941"},"modified":"2025-12-01T08:16:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:16:44","slug":"introducing-our-seasoned-series-on-culinary-pioneers-meet-mfk-fisher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/introducing-our-seasoned-series-on-culinary-pioneers-meet-mfk-fisher\/","title":{"rendered":"Seasoned: Culinary Pioneers \u2013 MFK Fisher"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"player_container player-80941\" ><div class=\"spp_player_textabove\"><b>Listen to the Episode  <\/b><\/div><div id=\"sm2-80941\" class=\"sm2-80941 playercontent sm2-bar-ui compact flat full-width full-width-player\"><div class=\"bd sm2-main-controls\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"sm2-inline-element sm2-button-element\">\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"sm2-button-bd\" style=\"background: transparent 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href=\"\"><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-1483337284-1024x674.jpg?theia_smart_thumbnails_file_version=2\" alt=\"Image credit: Janet Fries\/Hulton Archive via Getty Images.\" class=\"wp-image-80862\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">MFK Fisher. (Image credit: Janet Fries\/Hulton Archive via Getty Images.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not a stretch to say that the way we think, eat and write about food can be traced directly back to <a href=\"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/meet-mfk-fisher-who-changed-the-way-we-write-about-food\/\">MFK Fisher<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prolific California writer, born Mary Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher but better known by her initials, was &#8220;not a recipe writer,&#8221; says her biographer Anne Zimmerman, author of &#8220;An Extravagant Hunger.&#8221; &#8220;She was an eater. She was a sensual person. She enjoyed things. She observed things.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this podcast episode (listen above, or wherever you listen to <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/seasoned-women-culinary-pioneers-mfk-fisher\/id1036000689?i=1000736733399\">podcasts<\/a>), we explore the life of Fisher. Born in 1908, her early musings on food while abroad in France turned into a literary career that produced &#8220;The Gastronomical Me,&#8221; &#8220;How to Cook a Wolf&#8221; and &#8220;Consider the Oyster,&#8221; among many others. While many write food memoirs today, she is widely credited as inventing the entire genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode, we explore Fisher&#8217;s backstory, including a marriage that ended with her husband&#8217;s suicide, and her insatiable curiosity with the world. &#8220;Women&#8217;s lives are messy and they&#8217;re episodic. There&#8217;s reinvention and rebirth,&#8221; Zimmerman says. &#8220;MFK Fisher, she&#8217;s just an onion with the layers. It&#8217;s just constantly morphing and shifting.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/culinary-pioneers\/\">entire <em>Seasoned<\/em> project<\/a>, with more episodes rolling out in the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-more-from-this-series\">More From This Series<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/seasoned-women-culinary-pioneers-cecilia-chiang\/\">Seasoned, Episode 2 &#8211; Cecilia Chiang<\/a><\/strong><br>In San Francisco, an immigrant restaurateur brings authentic Chinese cuisine to the U.S. via The Mandarin. It&#8217;s a love letter to her childhood in China, pre-Communist Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/seasoned-women-culinary-pioneers-lena-richard\/\">Seasoned, Episode 3 &#8211; Lena Richard<\/a><\/strong><br>Down in the Big Easy, a Creole chef experiments with bold flavors and becomes a forebearer of today&#8217;s multihyphenate food personality, even as her life is cut short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"transcript-box\" style=\"float:none !important;\">\r\n<div class=\"accordion-container\">\r\n\t\t<a href=\"#\" class=\"accordion-toggle\">Read Full Transcript<span class=\"toggle-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-down\"><\/i><\/span><\/a>\r\n\t\t<div class=\"accordion-accordion_content\">\r\n\t\t\t<p><p>COLLEEN DEBAISE: Hi there, I'm Colleen DeBaise. Welcome to the Story Exchange. I've got our very own Victoria Flexner here.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA FLEXNER: I'm a writer and a food historian. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And today, we see a lot of high profile women in food--chefs and restaurant owners and of course TV hosts like Eva Longoria. <\/p>\n<p>EVA LONGORIA: I'm exploring Mexico to see how the people, their lands and their past, have shaped a culinary tradition.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And literal living legends like Alice Waters.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: The famous Chez Panisse owner and chef was recently featured on the Legends season of Emmy nominated series Chef's Table. <\/p>\n<p>CHEF\u2019S TABLE: Alice Waters is the mother of the farm to table movement. It's her uncompromising...<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: These shows got me thinking about some other female legends in food, specifically American food, who we might not be as familiar with today. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And as we approach the semi-quincentennial--<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: --which is the 250 year anniversary of America that's coming up in 2026--<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: --this country might be very divided, but we do all love our food. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Yeah. I mean, how would we even define American food today? It's so much more than the stereotypes of hamburgers and hot dogs.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: It's diverse--<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: --it's regional-- <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: --and it's personal. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And at this moment in U.S. history, I think American food culture is really worthy of investigation. Who are the legends who helped to define it? <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Or perhaps more importantly for us here at The Story Exchange, who are some of the women, some of the lesser known women who helped define American food culture? To kick off this special series, we're going to head to the super steamy New York City offices at The Story Exchange--<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: --to talk about the great American food writer, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, better known by her initials, MFK Fisher.<\/p>\n<p>COLEEN (FROM TAPE): Hi! How's it going?<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): It is warm. I'm like, sweating in my t-shirt.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): Is the radiator on?<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): I think it might be.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): Okay. All right, so tell me what you're doing.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): I am peeling a tangerine. I got these at Mr. Kiwi yesterday\u2026Lay it out on a paper towel and lay them on top of a radiator to cook them.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): Why are you doing this sort of weird experiment?<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): It's a good question, Colleen. It's a good question. (laughter)<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: So when MFK Fisher was spending time in France in the 1930s, she would carefully lay out little pieces of tangerine on her hot radiator. <\/p>\n<p>COLEEN (FROM TAPE): They look very orange and plumpy.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And then stick them on her snowy windowsill to chill. Yeah. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And she wrote a pretty famous short story about this.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Yes. She wrote, quote, \u201cAlmost every person has something secret that he likes to eat. It was then that I discovered little dried sections of tangerine. My pleasure in them is subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): It's a very good tangerine.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): It's very good. Yeah. Did you try this one? I tried the fresh batch. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Originally from California, Fisher was a prolific writer. She wrote over 30 books in her career. Books about her life, her day to day, the meals that punctuated them. She wrote about her life in France, her time in Europe. She wrote about love. <\/p>\n<p>MFK FISHER: People ask me, why do you write about food and eating and drinking? <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: That is MFK Fisher herself talking from a documentary called \u201cThe Art of Eating.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>FISHER: The easiest answer is to say that like most other humans, I am hungry.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Her 1937 essay \u201cBorderland\u201d inspired our tangerine radiator experiment and kind of perfectly encapsulates her style. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Totally. She's ostensibly writing about tangerines, but there's so much more there. She describes the world going by outside the window; watching late afternoon newspapers get delivered; soldiers, quote, \u201cstomping back from the Rhine;\u201d prostitutes, quote, \u201cmincing smartly into tea rooms.\u201d But there's also this sense of loneliness and boredom too. It's this super quiet little peek into the interior moments of someone's life.<\/p>\n<p>ACTOR AS FISHER: The sections of the tangerine are gone and I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell. There must be someone, though, who understands what I mean. Probably everyone does because of his own secret eatings. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: If you go into any bookstore today, at the front of the shop, there's usually a table with new releases, and there's sure to be some written by chefs or food media personalities.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Yeah. People want to know about the behind the scenes of restaurants. They might pick up Gabrielle Hamilton's \u201cBlood, Bones, and Butter,\u201d Marcus Samuelson's \u201cYes, Chef,\u201d or look out for Padma Lakshmi's new book, \u201cPadma's All-American.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Yeah. Although not as many people are familiar with MFK Fisher's books, published so long ago.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Mm. But I think once you kind of delve into her writing, people will find that her prose, her stories, they're very familiar, because her writing really served as the basis for the genre that we now know as food memoir. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE ZIMMERMAN: And I think what's amazing and notable is that it's very intimate, right? Like that's what we love about MFK Fisher is the intimacy of her voice. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: That's Anne Zimmerman.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: I wrote a biography of MFK Fisher that's called \u201cAn Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of MFK Fisher.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Needless to say, Anne is a fan of Fisher, who passed away in 1992 at the age of 83. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She's with James Beard. She's with Julia Child. She's the godmother of the American wine world and food world. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And I spoke to Anne because I don't think it's a stretch to say that the way that we write about food, the way that we think about food, the way that we talk about food, it can all be traced directly back to MFK Fisher.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: I think it is true that the thing that really sets MFK Fisher apart, especially if we're bringing her into the contemporary sphere, is that she was really not a recipe writer. She was an eater. She was a sensual person. She enjoyed things. She observed things.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: One of Fisher's most famous titles is \u201cHow to Cook a Wolf.\u201d It was published during 1942 in the middle of World War II. The book on its face is a guide to cooking during food shortages. The wolf in the title refers to hunger or poverty knocking at the door, but it's far more than a cookbook. It's a philosophical meditation on how to live well with less. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): I mean, I loved it, but it was like, yeah, what did I just read? Like it's not a cookbook\u2026<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Right, the narrative food memoir essay. And I do think she was the person who pioneered that. I do not think of her work as being recipe focused. It is not like, \u201cOh, Easter Sunday is coming up. This is what you should do.\u201d Like that hostessing, you know, she is not Martha Stewart. That is not her vibe. Her vibe is like, be out in the world, noticing and enjoying yourself and having these unique experiences and writing about them.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And yet, MFK Fisher is actually not that well known, at least these days, outside of food circles. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: I think that's true. Funnily enough, even Anne Zimmerman, her own biographer, hadn't really known much about her until she was getting her master's degree in women's studies at San Diego State. Originally, she'd planned to do her thesis on Zelda Fitzgerald. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Fisher and Fitzgerald are very close together in the library. And I had heard the name MFK Fisher from some of these people that worked in the wine industry in Oregon, but very much in a name droppy sort of way, like, \u201cOh, MFK Fisher, oh, MFK Fisher.\u201d And I would sort of like nod and be like, \u201cOh, sure, MFK Fisher, yes, obviously.\u201d (laughter) <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: So she checked out a whole bunch of books by MFK Fisher. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: I just read and cooked and read and thought and cooked. And by the end of it, I was like, this is who I want to write just this paper about. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: OK, when I think of food memoir, I think of two people from more modern times. Ruth Reichl, who was one of my favorites.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: She was the former Gourmet editor who wrote \u201cTender at the Bone\u201d and more recently, \u201cSave Me the Plums.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Yeah, so good. And I also think, of course, of the late, great Anthony Bourdain.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Always. For anyone who doesn't know, Bourdain basically blew apart the restaurant industry when he wrote \u201cKitchen Confidential\u201d in 2000. He then had a number of different shows on TV over the years that were really unlike any other food or travel show that came before it.<\/p>\n<p>ANTHONY BOURDAIN: I'm Anthony Bourdain. I write. I travel. I eat. And I'm hungry for more.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: And yet, we're saying MFK Fisher basically did all this first.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Not just first, but about oh, 60 or 70 years before anyone else was doing it. I asked Anne about this. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): Her writing is so unbelievably unique. And I'm curious what your thoughts on her influence on food memoir [are] and also how it compares to work in this space today. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: It's going back to this idea of like, writer versus cook. I used to kind of bristle at the Anthony Bourdain comp. I've come around to it a little bit just because they both had such singular personalities. Different personalities. I mean, to me, it's like a total Venn diagram thing where there is overlap and the little centers is the singular voice and the ability to like, write very embodied, close to the bone narrative that's voicey.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Whereas Bourdain's work is super macho...<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Yeah, macho. Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: ...MFK Fisher's work has a different style.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: It's not like her vibe is feminine, whatever that means. But the throughline for me is this, like, doing the work, going to the place that might not seem like the most obvious place. It's not the place with the best light. Doesn't have like, the floral Instagram background so that you can take a picture of your smoothie or whatever. And then talking to the people that were there, hearing the story and then eating the food and talking about the food and making a connection between all of those things. I mean, that to me is quintessential MFK Fisher. And I think there are a lot of people who are doing it. And the fact that there's not one heir to her legacy just proves like, how great she truly is.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: When we come back, we'll dive into more of MFK Fisher's backstory--<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: --a fascinating and adventurous life filled with tales of travel, heartbreak and living unapologetically. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: We'll be right back. <\/p>\n<p>COMMERCIAL: The Story Exchange is an award winning nonprofit media platform that elevates women's voices and achievements. Check out our site to read hundreds of startup stories and share one yourself at our 1,000 Stories+ project. Find out more at thestoryexchange.org. <\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Welcome back. We've been talking about the writer MFK Fisher--<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: --who essentially created the genre of food memoir and who profoundly influenced the way that we write and think about food.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: So something that jumps out to me about MFK Fisher, especially being a woman, is that she seems ahead of her time.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: I think in many ways she was. She started publishing her work in the 1930s and 40s. She wasn't writing about housekeeping or how to cook a nutritious meal for your family. She was writing about the lived experience of eating and cooking and drinking. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: My whole theory was and still is that she was a woman who married very young.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: That's Anne Zimmerman again, Fisher's biographer. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She came from a fairly cloistered upbringing, as many women did in that time. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Fisher's mother was a homemaker. Her father worked in newspapers. She briefly attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she would meet her future husband Al Fisher. They got married in 1929 when Fisher was just 21 years old, and they moved abroad a couple weeks later.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She went to France in 1929, which sounds fancy, but there really is no equivalent. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Yeah, France was still recovering from World War I. It was not the France that we know today. They moved to Dijon in eastern France, where Al was getting his PhD.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She didn't speak the language. Her husband was totally preoccupied with his job, which was to be a student at a university. She had no friends. She was totally alone. She could only communicate with her family by letters that took a very long time to get back and forth.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And it's in these letters that we really begin to see MFK Fisher's voice.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): I was wondering if you could speak to how her practice of writing letters home when she first moved to France with Al maybe helped define or inform the style that she would become known for.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: That's a great question. I'm not sure if anyone has ever actually asked me that question, and it's such a good one. So she was writing prolifically, very regularly, very prolifically; even though she was writing about how happy and perfect and she's so in love and she's having this like, amazing time as a newlywed with her husband\u2026that was sort of the first clue to me that maybe not everything was as depicted.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): The tangerine story to me feels like something you would do in like, the depths of quarantine, where you're like, losing it a little\u2026<br \/>\nANNE: I don't think she had a very happy marriage. So I think the whole birth of her creative voice really came from loneliness and really came from feeling outside of where she was, but wanting to get inside and realizing that pleasure and walking and soaking up the sights and the sounds and the foods and then sort of trying to replicate those foods and those experiences on the page for the people that she was writing to at home, was a way of easing her loneliness.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: In her letters home to California, she wrote these vivid descriptions of the meals that she and Al were eating in France.<\/p>\n<p>ACTOR AS FISHER: We ate terrines of p\u00e2t\u00e9 ten years old under their tight crusts of mildewed fat\u2026Then there were the snails, the best in the world, green and spitting in their delicate little coffins. There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were small and very succulent, grown in that ancient soil. Suddenly I recognized my own possibilities as a person, and I was almost stunned by the knowledge that never again would I eat or drink as I had done for my first 20 years. At 1.43 p.m. September 25th, 1929, when I picked up a last delicious crust crumb from the table, smiled dazedly at my love, peered incredulously at a great cathedral on the horizon, and recognized myself as a newborn sentient being, ready at last to live. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: The Fishers spent three years in France, but at the end of the day, the dream couldn't last forever.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Right. So they did come back to the United States. I mean, part of it was, you know, his time was kind of up at the university, but they were also out of money.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: It was the Great Depression.<\/p>\n<p>NEWSREEL: The tremendous crowds which you see gathered outside the Stock Exchange are due to the greatest crash in the history of the New York Stock Exchange and market prices. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Even with all of like the walking around and eating amazing meals and French pastries, etc., they were living pretty close to the bone. But they were kind of continually writing specifically to her family and saying, \u201cCould we get a little bit more money?\u201d And then that just kind of ran out. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Broke, the Fishers came home to America. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: And they were living in the Laguna Beach area with her family, kind of hopping around a little bit as he was trying to get jobs as an adjunct that he hoped would turn into like a full professor job.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And MFK? <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She was bored again, trying to get pregnant, not having luck getting pregnant, and taking the bus into L.A. and sitting at the Los Angeles Public Library and starting to study the work of Brillat-Savarin, who was a famous French philosopher. And really, that in itself is sort of remarkable, just in its like\u2014esoteric, how do you spend your days\u2026 (laughter)<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: But then a fateful meeting occurred.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She and Al became friends with another couple, Tim and Gigi Parrish. Tim was older. Gigi was a starlet.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And at some point, the friendship between MFK and Tim became romantic. They fell in love. They --<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: --ignited an affair that was truly life changing, because both of the marriages dissolved. MFK Fisher and Tim Parrish later married. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Tim was the love of her life. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: Tim Parrish was the person that said to MFK Fisher, this writing is good and you could do something with it. We all know as writers that half the time what you need is somebody to kind of, A, just believe in you, but B, kind of give you the gentle nudge to say like, maybe you could do this.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): Yeah, absolutely. But he also represents this like, moment where her career just really starts to flourish.<br \/>\nANNE: He fed her in ways that nobody else had, and I mean that in all the ways, actual food, but then also intellectually. They went on road trips all over the United States. They went back to France. They had this little plot of land in Switzerland. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: And MFK Fisher was very prolific during this time. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: \u201cServe it Forth\u201d came first and then \u201cHow to Cook a Wolf\u201d and \u201cConsider the Oyster,\u201d which is such a wonderful book.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: We have a clip of MFK Fisher talking about her writing in the 1992 documentary \u201cWriter with a Bite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>FISHER: What would I write about if I didn't write what I know? I'd be phony and I don't like phony things. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: But just as her career was really taking off, Tim, who was only in his 40s, was diagnosed with Buerger's disease, which is this horrible circulatory disease that causes excruciating pain.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): How many years was it from Tim's kind of initial diagnosis until he passed?<br \/>\nANNE: It was relatively quickly. He became incredibly depressed. He started smoking and drinking. That affected his circulation, which then made him more prone to clots, more prone to blood problems.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): It was this vicious cycle.<br \/>\nANNE: Yeah. And then more depression, more need for painkillers. You know, he would wake up screaming in pain. In the journals, it would say things like, you know, \u201cTim screamed all night saying he wanted to end it all.\u201d I don't want to misquote, but I but I feel like I remember things saying, like, \u201cHe asked me to get the gun and I said I wouldn't get the gun.\u201d Like it was always in play, the sort of drama-slash-cinema of it. They were living like in a shack, sort of on the way to Joshua Tree, Palm Springs area. And I feel like they just went out there because it was just so intense and they just needed to be alone. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: One morning, MFK Fisher awoke to the sound of a single gunshot ringing out across the desert. Tim had taken his life.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: The older I get, [I] sort of just realize how incredibly formative an experience like that would be for a person. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Here's MFK talking to journalist Bill Moyers about it in 1990. <\/p>\n<p>BILL MOYERS: Did you know he was going to take his life?<br \/>\nFISHER: Oh yes, sure.<br \/>\nMOYERS: Did you agree to it?<br \/>\nFISHER: Yes, I did. It was always a shock though. I kept him from killing himself once and then I said never again, never will do that to anybody.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: After Tim's suicide, MFK, who was just 33 years old, descended into this really dark place. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She's in this funk--understatement of the world--deep depression, funk, grief, sadness. And she goes to Mexico with her siblings and she writes very evocatively about a meal that she ate that she sort of says brought her back to her senses.<\/p>\n<p>ACTOR AS FISHER: The bowl has beans in it, large, light, tan beans cooked with some tomato and onion and many herbs. The feeling of that hot, strong food going down into my stomach was one of the finest I have ever had. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: It was the first thing she had really tasted since Tim died.<\/p>\n<p>ACTOR AS FISHER: The first thing that fed me, in spite of my sensuous meals always. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: As the waiter hovered nearby<\/p>\n<p>ACTOR AS FISHER: I ate everything and finished the beer. Then I paid him and thanked him more than he could know.<\/p>\n<p>ANNE: She was kind of like, \u201cOkay, I have to keep going. I'm young, I'm divorced and widowed, but I'm young and I deserve to keep going.\u201d She got a job writing for Hollywood. I think she had a lot of love affairs. She ended up getting pregnant and having a child alone.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): Didn't she tell her family she was doing top secret government work or something while she was pregnant?<br \/>\nANNE: She's writing to her family and telling them, like, \u201cSorry, I can't come for Thanksgiving because I have this top secret project.\u201d She's not a spy, but she was pregnant. And then, then she became a single mother. And this was like in 1946.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): A difficult time for a woman. Always a difficult time for a woman.<br \/>\nANNE: Yep.<\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: Fisher would later marry again, have another daughter, divorce again. She lived a long life, one filled with many distinct periods. She knew real pain and real heartbreak, but she also remained curious about the world and engaged with it. <\/p>\n<p>ANNE: The reason I was drawn initially to biography and to memoir was because the way women tell their lives is so different than the way a man would typically tell his life. And if a man is writing a biography, it is very focused on things that happened in their job, who they met, decisions they made. Like it's all very linear--not making gross generalizations--name droppy\u2026 But women's lives are messy and they're episodic and there's reinvention and rebirth. And MFK Fisher is just like an onion with the layers. I mean, it's just constantly sort of morphing and shifting.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): Mm, yeah.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: As we close out this episode, I'm thinking again about how weirdly close we felt to MFK Fisher as we recreated that experiment with the tangerines in our office and all the sights and sounds of it. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA (FROM TAPE): So the little clacks of the radiator and the hissing of the heat\u2026<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): And I should mention that we are not in 1930s France. We're in 2025 New York City.<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): This is one of the things I love about food history and recreating meals, is that you begin to inhabit this sort of shared metaphysical space with the person. And if you're lucky, someone from the past left behind words or music or art or something that gives you insight into their life. But it's like she's pulling up a chair.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): Yeah, yeah. I think she had a proof of this, right?<br \/>\nVICTORIA (FROM TAPE): Yeah, and sitting down with us\u2026 I know she loved gossip. I can kind of picture her like, smiling and crossing her arms as she eats a piece and maybe, you know, asking kind of a provocative question to get a little dirt on something that's going on.<br \/>\nCOLEEN (FROM TAPE): Yeah, she\u2019d probably want to know about our love life or something like that.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Thank you for spending time with us and MFK Fisher. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: In the rest of this series, we will continue to look at some of the women who helped to define American food culture, particularly those you may not have heard of. Join us next week as we take a look at the life and legacy of Cecilia Chiang.<\/p>\n<p>SIENA CHIANG: She was a trailblazer. She did her own thing, not necessarily what people thought she should do. <\/p>\n<p>VICTORIA: This has been the Story Exchange.<\/p>\n<p>COLLEEN: Join us next time to hear more stories about innovative and inspirational women doing the things you'd never dream of. Or maybe you would. If you like this podcast, please share on social media or post a review wherever you listen. It helps other people find the show and visit our website at the story exchange.org, where you'll find news, videos and tips for entrepreneurial women. And we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line at info at the story exchange dot org or follow us on Twitter at find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Bluesky. I'm Colleen DeBaise reporting by Victoria Flexner. Sound editing provided by Nusha Balyan. Production coordinator is Noel Flego. Executive producers are Sue Williams and Victoria Wong. Our mixer is Pat Donahue, recorded at Cutting Room Studios in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/p>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<!--\/.accordion-accordion_content-->\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our 6-episode podcast kicks off with the California writer who invented the food memoir. 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