Interview with Author Taras Grescoe

Taras Grescoe, a non-fiction specialist, writes essays, articles, and books. He is the author of Sacré Blues, The End of Elsewhere, The Devil’s Picnic, Bottomfeeder, Straphanger, and most author Taras Grescoe recently, Shanghai Grand. Taras is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Guardian, and National Geographic Traveler.

What eating insects in Mexico taught this Montrealer about food systems

If you look at hunter gatherers, they were eating an incredible … Range of foods — and we’ve lost that, so the past is definitely the place to go. And in the book I kind of go back and find examples of ancient lost foods that people are bringing back to life now, and those are exciting stories for me.

He has served as juror at the Canada Council for the Arts (publishing) and for the Marian Hebb Research Grant. Since the beginning of 2023, he has been a professor of Creative Writing, specializing in literary journalism, at Concordia University in Montreal. Rome, though the population of the comune is now 2.9 million—far bigger than its maximum under the Romans—remains a dysfunctional city.

Why We Need Car-Free School Streets

• A tenth of the 6,000 or so breeds of domesticated animals used in agriculture are already extinct.
• Taras Grescoe is the author of seven nonfiction books and a widely read commentator on the interplay of food, travel, and the environment.
• We’re getting far more efficient at feeding far more people.
• Lauro knew that Mussolini’s actual hold on power was shaky, and based on bluff.
• Some of them were, but I was soon sidetracked by Lauro de Bosis, a brilliant Italian-American poet.
• His debut book, Sacré Blues, won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and McAuslan First Book Prize.

It was also awarded the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction by the Quebec Writers’ Federation, first prize for Literary Food Writing from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize. Straphanger won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and was one of five finalists for the Writers’ Trust Award in 2012, as well as being longlisted for the National B.C. Book Prize for Non-Fiction and becoming one of five finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Following the publication of Straphanger, he has given dozens of keynote talks—from Portland, Oregon to Halifax, Nova Scotia—on the subject of sustainable transportation and urbanism. Born in Toronto, raised in Calgary and Vancouver, and schooled in flânerie in Paris, he now lives on an island called Montreal, which can be found at the confluence of the Ottawa and Saint Lawrence Rivers. Taras Grescoe is the author of seven nonfiction books and a widely read commentator on the interplay of food, travel, and the environment.

The city the German and British Romantics loved in the nineteenth century was a beautiful backwater, where sheep grazed among the ruins of the Forum. The Liberals made Rome a capital again, but in spite of their attempts to modernize—bringing in streetlights, sanitation, taking measures to limit the damage brought on by the flooding of the Tiber—it remained backwards compared to London, Berlin, and Paris. Mussolini and the Fascists focused on building new roads and triumphal routes, and “liberating” the imperial monuments they approved of, often at the expense of poor residents who were relocated from their demolished homes to makeshift hovels far from the centre of the city. It tells the story of Lauro de Bosis, an Italian-American poet and aviator, who defied Mussolini’s politics – in the air.

Com-pared to Turin and Milan, it’s not really a productive, industrial city—yet it remains a centre of power, for the Church and the national government. In what aspects does the Rome you describe in the book differ from the Rome of today? You write in your book, “To many Italians, the city was a shame-ful symbol of national decline.” This refers to the early 1900s, but it’s a sentence that could very well be written today.

Since 1900, three-fourths of the genetic diversity once stored in farmers’ fields has been lost. Under the guidance of a British expert in Roman cookery, I spent three months fermenting garum from Portuguese sardines. It’s now become a secret ingredient in my own cooking; it brings savory intensity to all kinds of stews and pasta sauces. Making garum was a way of discovering how unfamiliar—but also how delicious—ancient cooking really was. I realized the Roman mix of sweet, sour, and savory has more in common with Cantonese cooking than it does with modern Italian food. Taras Grescoe is a journalist, travel writer, and author of several nonfiction titles, such as Straphanger, Bottomfeeder, and The End of Elsewhere.