Bryant Terry is an award-winning artist, author, publisher, and community builder defined by the fluidity with which his practices move between cooking, writing, curating, bookmaking, conceptualism, social practice, music, and design. Terry channels the spirit of his genetic, intellectual, activist, and artist ancestors to inspire us to work towards a more healthy, just, and sustainable world.
San Francisco Magazine included Terry among 11 Smartest People in the Bay Area Food Scene, and Fast Company named him one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food. In regard to his work, Terry’s mentor Alice Waters says, “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.”
Terry is the founder and editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books, an imprint of Ten Speed Press and Penguin Random House, which collaborates with the most forward-thinking and groundbreaking BIPOC chefs, writers, artists, activists, and innovators to craft visually stunning nonfiction books that inspire readers and give rise to a more beautiful, healthy, just, and sustainable world. He is also co-principal and innovation director of Zenmi, a values-driven creative studio he founded. For the 2022-2023 academic year Terry is an Artist Fellow at UC Berkeley as a member of the second cohort of Abolition Democracy Fellows, working between the Black Studies and Art Practice Departments. From 2015 to 2022 he served as the Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco where he curated public programming at the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, and culture.
Terry is also the author of six critically acclaimed books, and he has won a James Beard Award, an NAACP Image Award, and an Art of Eating Prize for his work. His latest book, a collection of recipes, art, and stories, entitled Black Food was published by his imprint 4 Color Books in October 2021. It went on to win the Art of Eating Prize which is awarded to the year’s best book about food. Black Food was the most critically acclaimed American cookbook published that year landing on lists by The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Food52, Glamour, and many other publications. Vegetable Kingdom, Terry’s fifth book, was published by Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House in February 2020 in the midst of a pandemic and went on to be a commercial and critical success winning an NAACP Image Award (Outstanding Literary Work), getting nominated for a James Beard Award, and being named one of the best cookbooks of the year by The New Yorker, Vogue, Food & Wine, and many other publications. His book, Afro-Vegan was named one of the best vegetarian cookbooks of all time by Bon Appétit. Terry is also the author of the critically acclaimed Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine, which was named one of the best vegetarian/vegan cookbooks of the last 25 years by Cooking Light Magazine.
As an exclusive speaker signed with the Lavin Agency, Terry presents frequently around the country as a keynote speaker at community events, conferences, and colleges, including Brown, Columbia, NYU, Smith, Stanford, and Yale. In the fall of 2023, Terry will begin an MFA Program in Art Practice at UC Berkeley. He graduated from the Chef’s Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, and he is a former Ph.D. student who holds an MA in History with an emphasis on the African Diaspora from NYU, where he studied under Historian Robin D.G. Kelly. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their two daughters.
