The Nach Waxman Prize

The Judges

Darra Goldstein, the founding editor of Gastronomica and editor in chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies, has won numerous prizes for her work in food, including James Beard and IACP awards. She serves as series editor of California Studies in Food and Culture from the University of California Press and is also the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College, where she moved beyond her initial training in Russian literature to teach courses in food studies. Goldstein has consulted for the Council of Europe on using food as a tool for tolerance and diversity and has held distinguished fellowships in food studies at the University of Toronto and the University of Melbourne. She currently sits on the board of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and is a member of the advisory “Kitchen Cabinet” of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Morna Livingston is an architectural photographer specializing in gravity water systems and cultural landscapes. An avid cook from the time of her first trip to France, later travel took her to India, Italy, the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia. Here she tasted new foods and photographed markets, gardens, and farm landscapes. Currently she lives in an 18th century house, and during the cold weather indulges in a love of fireplace cooking using antique tools.

Mayukh Sen is the author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021), which was named a best book of 2021 by NPR, one of the Wall Street Journal’s favorite books of 2021, a New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick, and longlisted for the 2022 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. He has won a James Beard Award and IACP Award for his food writing, and his work has been anthologized in three editions of The Best American Food Writing. His next book, Love, Queenie, a biography of the Indian-born Old Hollywood actress Merle Oberon, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Company in winter 2025. He has taught food writing at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and Columbia University’s creative writing program, and he lives in Brooklyn.