Tonight, the James Beard Foundation announced its Media Award winners for 2024, culling down the longlist of nominees into medal recipients in categories covering cookbooks, journalism, and television and audio programming. The ceremony was hosted by CBS This Morning co-host Michelle Miller.
Among the notable winners: Hetty Lui McKinnon’s acclaimed Tenderheart won the Book Awards’ Vegetable-Focused category, while Sohla El-Waylly took home the prize in for the General Cookbook category for Start Here. Instagrammer KJ Kearney of @BlackFoodFridays received the award for Social Media Account, five-time Beard award winner Pati Jinich notched her sixth in the Broadcast Docuseries Visual Media category for Season 2 of her PBS show La Frontera with Pati Jinich. Made with Lau’s Randy Lau won two awards: one for Emerging Voice in Broadcast and another for Instructional Visual Media.
Several honorees addressed current events in their acceptance speeches. In hers, El-Waylly referenced recent attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza where “over 200 people, mostly women and children were killed; a lot of women and children who look like me and have names like mine.” Accepting the International Cookbook win for his work on The World Central Kitchen Cookbook, Sam Chapple-Sokol honored Zomi Frankcom, one of the seven WCK aid workers killed by IDF forces on April 1: Frankcom, Chapple-Sokol noted, was a reader on the book and “I will always think of Zomi when I read this book.”
In additional honors, chef Pierre Thiam was inducted into the hall of fame, while Ruth Reichl received the foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
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2024 James Beard Media Award Winners
2024 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winners
The Book Awards recognize cookbooks and other non-fiction food or beverage-related books that were published in the U.S. in 2023. Books from foreign publishers must bear a 2023 U.S. copyright date and/or must have been distributed in the U.S. during 2023.
Baking and Desserts: Dark Rye and Honey Cake: Festival Baking from Belgium, the Heart of the Low Countries by Regula Ysewijn (Weldon Owen)
Beverage with Recipes: Slow Drinks: A Field Guide to Foraging and Fermenting Seasonal Sodas, Botanical Cocktails, Homemade Wines, and More by Danny Childs (Hardie Grant North America)
Beverage without Recipes: Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcals by Gary Paul Nabhan and David Suro Piñera (W. W. Norton & Company)
Food Issues and Advocacy: Resilient Kitchens: American Immigrant Cooking in a Time of Crisis: Essays and Recipes by Philip Gleissner and Harry Eli Kashdan (Rutgers University Press)
General: Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook by Sohla El-Waylly (Alfred A. Knopf)
International: The World Central Kitchen Cookbook by José Andrés and Sam Chapple-Sokol (Clarkson Potter)
Literary Writing: The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García by Laura Tillman (W. W. Norton & Company)
Reference, History, and Scholarship: White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation by Naa Oyo A. Kwate (University of Minnesota Press)
Restaurant and Professional: Fish Butchery: Mastering The Catch, Cut, and Craft by Josh Niland (Hardie Grant Books)
Single Subject: Pasta Every Day: Make It, Shape It, Sauce It, Eat It by Meryl Feinstein (Hachette Book Group)
U.S. Foodways: Love Japan: Recipes from Our Japanese American Kitchen by Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi with Gabriella Gershenson (Ten Speed Press)
Vegetable-Focused Cooking: Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon (Alfred A. Knopf)
Visuals: The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp; Yudi Echevarria (Ten Speed Press)
Emerging Voice: Abi Balingit
2024 James Beard Foundation Broadcast Media Award Winners
The Broadcast Media Awards recognize non-fiction works in English covering food and beverage topics and appearing widely for the first time in the United States in 2023. These works are from digital and terrestrial media — radio, television broadcasts, podcasts, documentaries, online sites, and social media.
Audio Programming: Fed with Chris van Tulleken; “Series 1: Planet Chicken”; Airs on: BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4
Audio Reporting: Samia Basille, Emma Morgenstern, and Dan Pashman; The Sporkful; “What ‘Couscousgate’ Tells Us About French Food”; Airs on: All podcast platforms
Commercial Media: The Mayda Creative Co.; The Black Kitchen Series: Innovators, Season 2; Airs on: All podcast platforms
Documentary Visual Media: The Michoacan File; Airs on: Various film festivals
Docuseries Visual Media: La Frontera with Pati Jinich, Season 2; Airs on: PBS and Amazon Prime
Instructional Visual Media: Made with Lau; Airs on: Made with Lau channel on YouTube
Social Media Account: KJ Kearney; Black Food Fridays; Airs on: Instagram
Unscripted Visual Media: Street Eats, Bon Appétit; Airs on: Bon Appétit website and YouTube
Visual Media — Short Form: Great Wall; Airs on: Vimeo
Visual Media — Long Form: SOMM: Cup of Salvation; Airs on: Somm TV
Emerging Voice: Randy Lau
2024 James Beard Foundation Journalism Award Winners
The Journalism Awards recognize works in English and cover food- or drink-related content which were published — or self-published — in 2023 in any medium.
Beverage: “Navigating the new sober boom, where a person’s sobriety is as unique as their fingerprint”; D. Watkins, Salon
Columns and Newsletters: “A meal of many seasons”; “Good ice”; “Subsistence abundance”; Laureli Ivanoff, High Country News
Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award: “The Food Scene: A Jewel of New Jersey’s Palestinian Enclave”; “Tables for Two: Scarr’s Pizza”; “Tables for Two: Cecchi’s”; Helen Rosner, The New Yorker
Dining and Travel: “An Inspiring Journey Home”; “21 Things Craig Laban Ate in Mexico”; “Mexican Spirits, Philly Energy”; Jessica Griffin and Craig Laban, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Feature Reporting: “Saving the Hogs of Ossabaw Island: An eccentric heiress, a daring mission, and the fight for North America’s most unusual pig.” Diana Hubbell, Gastro Obscura
Food Coverage in a General Interest Publication: Switchyard
Foodways: “Billions of snow crabs are missing. A remote Alaskan village depends on the harvest to survive.” Julia O’Malley, Grist and FERN
Health and Wellness: “Melted, pounded, extruded: Why many ultra-processed foods are unhealthy”; Anahad O’Connor and Aaron Steckelberg, The Washington Post
Home Cooking: “Cook with MSG”; Mari Uyehara, Food & Wine
Innovative Visual Storytelling: “The Protein Problem”; The Associated Press Health and Science Team, The Associated Press
Investigative Reporting: “A Fleet Prone to Captive Labor and Plunder”; “The Uyghurs Forced to Process the World’s Fish”; “A Brief History of a Problematic Appetizer”; Ian Urbina and the Staff of The Outlaw Ocean Project, The Outlaw Ocean Project and The New York Times
Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award: “Our Brunches, Ourselves: Atlanta’s a divided city. Could unity be found on Sunday at 11 a.m.?”; “All Together Now: Pop-up collective Stolen Goods counts some of Atlanta’s finest young chefs of color among its ranks”; “Less Offal, but Still Pretty Good: Holeman & Finch Public House”; Mike Jordan, Atlanta Magazine
MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award: “The Kids on the Night Shift”; Hannah Dreier, The New York Times Magazine
Personal Essay: “Immigrant Spaghetti”; Farhan Mustafa, The Bitter Southerner
Personal Essay with Recipes: “Market Volatility”; Julia Langbein, Bon Appétit
Profile: Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker
Emerging Voice: Cuisine Noir/The Global Food and Drink Initiative
Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Awards. Eater is partnering with the James Beard Foundation to livestream the awards in 2024. All editorial content is produced independently of the James Beard Foundation.
Additional photo illustration credits: Getty Images for the James Beard Foundation
