Betsy Block
John Willoughby, the executive editor of Gourmet, says, "Betsy Block is one of my favorite Boston writers."
James Beard Award-winning authors Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page add, "Mama can not only cook, she can write."
Judy Havemann, (now former) food editor of the Washington Post: "That is hilarious."
And editors from NPR have called her "talented, smart, edgy and fun," not to mention "laugh-out-loud" funny.
Betsy Block is the author of the critically acclaimed book about changing her family's diet, The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World.
Betsy has written food features, profiles, restaurant reviews, travel pieces, personal essays, and reported lifestyle stories for publications such as Wondertime, Cookie, Entrepreneur, Natural Health, NPR Online's Kitchen Window column, Epicurious.com, The Boston Globe, Boston magazine, and the online city guides Sidewalk and CitySearch, as well as many other local publications.
Betsy grew up in Washington, D.C. She worked in catering companies and casual restaurants throughout high school and college.
She spent a semester in Kenya during her junior year at Brown, graduating with honors in 1988. She then worked for a year at the renowned Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Somehow, a few years later, she ended up in a master's degree program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Just as she was getting dangerously involved with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, she read Ruth Reichl's Le Cirque review. Next thing anyone knew, she had dropped out of graduate school to become, of all things, a freelance writer with a focus on food.
Betsy lives near Boston with her husband, two kids, a now-deceased but rowdy to the very end mutt, any number of wilting or dying plants, one (formerly) hardy betta fish (blue, now dead), and a dwarf hamster that's like an adorable Disney character come to life, except it bites. Hard.
