Ann Arbor Jewish Book Festival Program

HYBRID LUNCH & LEARN PROGRAM

With Author Sylvie Bigar, Cassoulet Confessions

Moderated by Lonnie Sussman

12:00 PM | Lunch at the JCC | Author Will Join Virtually

When Sylvie accepted an apparently anodyne assignment on cassoulet, France’s ancestral bean and meat stew, she could not have known that she was about to jump into a rabbit hole that would lead her miles away from her upper-crust childhood in Switzerland and force her to reckon with her identity and her own dramatic family history. Cassoulet Confessions, a poignant gourmand memoir, vacillates between generational family drama and Sylvie’s gastronomic training as the reader is engulfed in the simmering smells of the French kitchen, then suddenly thrown in the terrifying front seat of the family car.

Award-win­ning food and trav­el writer Sylvie Bigar was born in Gene­va, Switzer­land, and is based in New York City. Her writ­ing has appeared wide­ly, includ­ing in The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, Food & Wine, Forbes​.com, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Edi­ble, Depar­tures, Trav­el + Leisure, and Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er. Bigar co-authored chef Daniel Boulud’s defin­i­tive Daniel: My French Cui­sine, as well as Liv­ing Art: Style Your Home with Flow­ers, with flo­ral artist and design­er Olivi­er Giugni.