American · 1937–2016
Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor (1937-2016) was an American writer, culinary anthropologist and broadcaster, born in Fairfax, South Carolina, and raised partly in Philadelphia. She studied at the New School and spent formative years in 1950s Paris among expatriate writers and artists. Her 1970 book Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl fused memoir, folklore and recipes rooted in Gullah Lowcountry foodways, arriving decades before the culinary memoir became a recognized genre and helping found American food writing as a literary form. She also worked as an actress, appearing in the film Beloved (1998), and spent over two decades as a commentator for NPRs All Things Considered, tracing food as cultural history across the African diaspora. She died in 2016, remembered as a pioneering voice connecting Gullah/Geechee culture to the wider American table.