Andrew Barton, Ali Francis, and Lola Milholland in conversation
Literary Arts is excited to welcome author and journalist Ali Francis to celebrate her debut book, The Curious Lives of Vegetables, a wild journey through the hidden histories of plants.
Francis will be joined by Portland writers Lola Milholland (Group Living and Other Recipes) and Andrew Barton (Free Food: earth eating, The Long Loaf, The Myrtlewood Cookbook) for a conversation moderated by environmental journalist and author Devon Fredericksen (How to Camp in the Woods).
Together, they’ll explore what food can tell us about how we live: our relationships with plants and place, the ways knowledge and traditions move between people, what gets lost when food systems become less diverse, and what we might recover by paying closer attention to the things we eat. Moving from vegetables and biodiversity to bread, communal tables, regional foodways, and the everyday work of feeding people, the conversation will consider food not simply as something we consume, but as a reflection of our relationships with the natural world.
About the book:
Why are some carrots purple? What does a 1,000-year-old lotus seed have to tell us about survival? How did a tomato named for Paul Robeson become a political symbol? And what disappears when a vegetable disappears?
In The Curious Lives of Vegetables, Australian journalist Ali Francis goes digging into the astonishing stories hiding in our crisper drawers, gardens, markets, and seed banks. Across more than 100 beautifully illustrated stories, she traces the plants we eat through migration and colonialism, politics and religion, extinction and revival, revealing vegetables as living records of human history — and essential seeds for a more resilient future.Â
Along the way, Francis encounters ancient seeds brought back from the dead, vegetables carried across borders by displaced communities, plants transformed by centuries of human preference, and varieties now teetering on the edge of extinction. At once playful, deeply researched, and urgent, The Curious Lives of Vegetables asks us to look again at the ordinary plants on our plates, and to consider their extraordinary importance.Â
Andrew Barton
Andrew Barton is the author of Free Food: earth eating, The Long Loaf: bread for all days, and The Myrtlewood Cookbook: Pacific Northwest Home Cooking. He is the publisher and designer behind Two Plum Press, where he has been making books in Portland for more than a decade. By day, he teaches at the Arbor School of Arts & Sciences.
Ali Francis
Ali Francis is an Australian journalist and former Bon Appétit reporter living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Cut, BBC, The Guardian, TASTE, and other publications. She’s the co-founder of Best Food Blog, a journalist-owned publication about eating, and writes Anyway!, a newsletter about how to be alive. The Curious Lives of Vegetables is her first book.
Lola Milholland
Lola Milholland is a food-business owner, social-practice artist, and writer. Her work has been published by The Guardian, Time Magazine, Oprah Daily, Gastronomica, Oregon Humanities, and others. A former editor for Edible Portland, she currently lives in Portland and runs Umi Organic, a noodle company committed to providing nutritious public-school lunches. Her debut book, Group Living and Other Recipes, was published by Spiegel & Grau in 2024.Â
Devon Fredericksen
Devon Fredericksen is an author, essayist, and nature writer. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, High Country News, and bioGraphic, among other publications. Her books include How to Camp in the Woods and her forthcoming project, Only the Birds Know: A Love Story Between a People, a Place, and a Remarkable Duck (Pegasus, 2028). She writes the Substack newsletter Bitten Fruit and lives in Portland, Oregon.
