PS21/PATHWAYS – Food Cultures: A Conversation

What does the food we eat say about us and the world we live in? What stories can we tell through food? How has the way we eat evolved, and what is the future of food?  

Join us for a full afternoon of events, featuring a first discussion on the intersection of food and migration, followed by a participative workshop led by an architect and pastry chef, a book signing, and a second discussion on the future of sustainable farming. We will end the day with a dance party.

Suggested donation: $15 per adult (includes complimentary wine and cheese)

Schedule

2pm | Feeding Creativity: Food and Migration

Conversation + Q&A with Sanaë Lemoine, cookbook author (Make It Japanese and Hot Sheet) and novelist (The Margot Affair), Mayukh Sen, author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, and Adam Dalva, writer, editor and professor of creative writing.

3pm | Book Signing with Sanaë Lemoine and Mayukh Sen

Organized in partnership with The Chatham Bookstore

3-5pm | Tarte-ography

This interactive pastry workshop, suitable for all ages, explores the multi-cultural urbanization of New York City through flavors, textures, and patterns. Participants will collaboratively create a large pastry map using various creams, toppings, and sauces to abstractly interpret the evolution of the city’s diverse cultures and neighborhoods. Building on the conversations of the day, the workshop will conclude with the consumption of the intricately composed pastry cityscape.

4pm | Growing Together: Pathways to Sustainable Food Systems

Conversation + Q&A with Lindsey Lusher Shute, co-owner of Hearty Roots Community Farm and founder and CEO of the Farm Generations Cooperative, and Emma Ractliffe, founder and co-director of Ranchlands Coop, moderated by Writer, Editor and Journalist Lela Nargi.

5pm| Dance Party

Featuring Tim Davis, AKA DJ Giant Corporation, and dancer Gillian Bowen. Open to all ages and abilities, the Dance Craze Dance Party will start with learning the moves to a few Dance Crazes from the 50s and 60s, and a dance party will ensue, with an exquisitely curated playlist of songs designed to move the body to those particular rhythms. 

See how to get to PS21 here.

Participants

Gillian Bowen is a modern and contemporary dancer based in NYC. She studied with the Martha Graham School and is a certified teacher of the Graham technique. Having experienced many facets of the dance world since starting her training at the age of five, Gillian is looking to expand its current structures and transcend its limitations.

Savinien Caracostea is a kaleidoscopic creative, working at the intersection of design, culture & technology. He brings his expertise in graphic, spatial and culinary design to imagine, generate and activate the commercial and leisure spaces of tomorrow. In addition to consulting international brands on creative strategy and innovation, he publishes a magazine and started a non-profit exploring the future of hospitality.

Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Atlantic. He serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University. Dalva is a writer-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Invisible Dog Art Center, and has received fellowships from Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle, Iceland’s Gullkistan, the Vermont Studio Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Wildacres. His graphic novel, Olivia Twist, was published by Dark Horse in 2019. Adam was a judge of the 2022 Story Prize, the Books Editor of Words Without Borders, and the Senior Fiction Editor of Guernica. 

Tim Davis is an artist, writer, and musician who spends an embarrassing amount of his life listening to, writing about, collecting, and being devoted to music. His photographs are in the collections of dozens of museums internationally, and he teaches photography at Bard College. You can see his work here.

Sanaë Lemoine is a novelist and cookbook author. Born in Paris to a Japanese mother and French father, she was raised in France and Australia, and now lives in New York. Her first novel, The Margot Affair, was published by Hogarth in 2020, and she is the co-author of two cookbooks, Make It Japanese (2023, with Rie McClenny) and Hot Sheet (2024, with Olga Massov). She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. In 2022, she was a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.   

Lindsey Lusher Shute is the co-owner of Hearty Roots Community Farm and the co-founder and CEO of Farm Generations Cooperative, an organization that leverages technology and tradition to build a more just and sustainable future for food and farmers. Earlier, Lindsey co-founded the National Young Farmers Coalition, and led it for 10 years as it grew from a handful of volunteer farmers into a nationwide network with 40 chapters in 28 states and a grassroots base of over 150,000 people. The Coalition worked closely with USDA to improve its support of young farmers, including a micro-lending program that has now served tens of thousands of farmers nationwide. She was recognized as a “Champion of Change” by President Barack Obama and is the recipient of the Glynwood’s “Harvest Award.” She holds a BFA from New York University and an MS in Environmental Policy from Bard College.     

Lela Nargi is an award-winning journalist, author, and editor living in Brooklyn. Her work covering the intersections of food systems and food policy, science, the environment, and social justice issues has appeared in Civil Eats, Eater, Food and Environment Reporting Network, The Guardian, Modern Farmer, Mother Jones, The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and many other outlets. She also writes books – mostly about science, mostly for kids. 

Emma Ractliffe is an entrepreneur, activist, and farming enthusiast with bases in New York City and the Hudson Valley. She was born and raised in France, where her father, a biodynamic vegetable farmer, inspired her passion for regenerative agriculture. Early in her career, Emma worked with smallholder farmers in India and Egypt as COO of Sara’s Organic Food, an organic food distribution company. More recently, in the United States, Emma has focused on applying finance to create a better food system. She is the founder and co-director of Ranchlands Coop, a cooperative land investment platform that purchases land on behalf of its ranch members to remove it from the speculative market. She has a BA in Economics and Middle Eastern Studies from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Stanford University.  

Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award-winning author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021) and the forthcoming Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (2025). Three of his essays have  been published in The Best American Food Writing, and his articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other magazines and newspapers. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn. 

Presented in partnership with PS21 and The Chatham Bookstore.