The author of Kelly's best book of 2024, Zackary Vernon, is coming to discuss his newest nonfiction book! He will be talking with Kelly about the ins and outs of the ethical food movement.

About the Book:

In pursuit of a more ethical way of eating,  Zackary Vernon moved to Boone, North Carolina. While volunteering, working, and interviewing people related to the ethical food movement, he struggled with extreme views on both sides of the issue. He wondered: can you be an ethical eater without fully sacrificing pleasure and joy? While there are no easy answers, open_in_newVernon, a professor of English at Appalachian State University, offers ways for us to fail better as we consider how to eat more ethically in the future. He is also the author of the debut novel, Our Bodies Electric, editor of Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies, and co-editor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash.

About the Author:

Zackary Vernon lives in Boone, NC, where he's on the faculty at Appalachian State University. He is the author of the debut novel, Our Bodies Electric, editor of Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies, and co-editor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash. His creative nonfiction has been published in magazines and journals, such as Salvation South, The Bitter Southerner, North Carolina Literary Review, and Carolina Quarterly. You can find him online at open_in_newzackaryvernon.com. He's also on Instagram @zackvernon33, where you will find pictures of food, mountains, a dog named Turnip, and occasional drawings that look like they've been done by a precocious child.

About the Moderator:

Dr. Jessica Martell is an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in literature, food, film, and the environment. She is the open_in_newFulbright-Queen's University Belfast Scholar in Irish Studies, 2025-2026. She is the author of Farm to Form: Modernist Literature and Ecologies of Food in the British Empire (University of Nevada Press, 2020), which investigates the relationship between the industrial food of empire and the emergence of literary modernisms in Britain and Ireland. Dr. Martell teaches interdisciplinary courses in the Global Studies program at Watauga Residential College.