Food narratives are vulnerable narratives, stories of belonging, identity, justice, disparities, and community. Food is biography. It is complex, imbued with harm and healing, grief, sorrow, and love.
Our experiences with food almost immediately become storied in narrative. Randall Kenan, in his talk about the character of the yam in The Invisible Man to the 2018 Southern Foodways Symposium on food and literature, shared:
“For me, the hallmark of food in literature, raised to the level of art, is food interacting with character. Food as character. Food doing stuff. Food being stuff. Just as it happens with our flesh and blood, our mouths and our bellies and our memories. The best writers know that food is identity. Food is alive. Food is us.”
Ruby is a bi-annual literary magazine that publishes short-form food narratives that strive for voice, artistry, and character. We want work that grabs us and doesn’t let us go—fierce prose we wish we had written.
Send us your literary, genre-nonconforming, experimental, hybrid, surprising, tender, painful words. Food narratives are vulnerable narratives, stories of belonging, identity, justice, disparities, and community. Food is biography. It is complex, imbued with harm and healing, grief, sorrow, and love.
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