My newest book garnered the following review from Midwest Book Review:* Stoves & Suitcases: Searching for Home in the World’s Kitchens should be in the holdings of any collection strong in culinary biography and history. What began as a search for home and roots evolved into a culinary exploration, as Cynthia D. Bertelsen documents in chapters that … More Midwest Book Review on “Stoves & Suitcases”
My latest book is out, a story of culinary discoveries and life’s big-and-little adventures.
A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.― Mark Twain Memory is a fleeting thing. Fallible as memory can be, writers depend on it when writing memoirs. Everyone wants to write a memoir these days, so much so that examples have been multiplying exponentially since Mary Karr published her genre-upending memoir, The Liar’s … More Writing Memoir, or, Taking the Winding Road to All Those Forgotten Places
A sneak preview of the cover of my upcoming book, filled with comfort food and memories, a culinary memoir inspired by my mother-in-law. Cover design by Cathy Gibbons Reedy
Memory, fickle memory. To recall the long-ago past becomes a journey into a place where truth flits behind trees or ducks into closets, an exhausting game of hide-and-seek where no player easily becomes “It.” Do you remember going to the Saturday afternoon movies when you were a kid? How you got so engrossed in the … More Pumping Sunshine: Susie H. Baxter’s Rural North Florida Childhood
Memory is a funny thing. By “funny,” I’m not thinking Woody Allen amusing or Amy Schumer hilarious. No, by “funny” I mean something akin to “strange” or “perplexing” or even “otherworldly.” And indeed memory can be perplexing, making it appear as the stuff of fabulists. Trying to remember what happened last week, much less 50 or … More The Fallibility of Memory, or, The Fabulists among Us
It’s not often that the words of poor peasants appear in print. And when they do, it’s a cause for rejoicing, especially for scholars pertaining to the Braudel/Certeau school of the history of daily life. What’s more, our current nostalgic longings for a more paradisiacal past evaporate quickly in the light of these often ruthlessly real … More Memoirs of a Breton Peasant: Sifting Through the Nostalgia
CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN 
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