Latria Graham

Latria Graham is a writer, recipe developer and fifth-generation South Carolina farmer documenting the foodways of Black people in the Southeast, with a particular interest in Southern Appalachia. She’s written long-form pieces about everything from poke salad to chitterlings.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Latria later earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The New School in New York City. After years of traveling the country to cover systemic injustice in underrepresented communities, she recently decided to turn her focus to small towns in the American South at risk of disappearing due to gentrification and Southern expansion.

In 2019 she was awarded the Great Smoky Mountain Association's Steve Kemp Writer-in-Residence position, and for two years she has been in and out of conservation spaces, intent on unearthing long forgotten Black history that she finds crucial to the narrative we tell about the American South. Her work in the region centers on the lives of the enslaved population that lived on the Tennessee side of what is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

She holds contributing editor positions at Garden & Gun Magazine and Outdoor Retailer Magazine. In addition to Serious Eats, her work has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Southern Living, and Better Homes and Gardens.

What's your desert island food?

"Roast chicken. Few things on the planet beat a well-seasoned expertly-cooked bird. It's so versatile! Put it on some homemade pita bread with a little cucumber salad and hummus and it's gonna be *hard* to get me to leave that island and go back to civilization—but I'll take a good roast chicken any way I can get it."

What's your favorite condiment?

"Years-fermented fish sauce (nam pla). This odiferous little condiment is one of my favorites and I'm mentioning it over another condiment staple (hummus, particularly black-eyed pea hummus, which is A1) because it's *so* underrated. This funky-in-the-best-way sauce is a salty with a hint of sweet towards the end, and it's the umami bomb I often find missing from sauces that I don't make from scratch. Its earthy edge always makes my sauces better, and while tamari is a decent vegan substitute, it just isn't the same. Get yourself a good bottle of fermented fish sauce and thank me later."