JBF Platform Holiday Market with BEM
Join us for the inaugural Platform Artisan Holiday Market, where food lovers and book enthusiasts come together to celebrate the joys of cooking and reading!
This is your chance to find unique gifts for every book lover on your list. Browse our extensive collection of books across all genres, including cookbooks, fiction, nonfiction, children's literature, and young adult titles. Whether you’re shopping for your favorite home cook or the budding readers in your life, we have something for everyone.
Plus, we'll host Black food icons Chef Carla Hall and Dr. Jessica B. Harris for special holiday activations that afternoon:
12:30-2:00pm Annual BEM Kids Holiday Read-Aloud: Carla and the Christmas Cornbread read by Carla Hall, followed by a book signing
2:30-4:00pm A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook talk and signing with Dr. Jessica B. Harris in conversation with Carla Hall, followed by a book signing
We're thrilled to bring both of these authors back to JBF Platform to explore some of their own holiday traditions at this special time of year. In Carla and the Christmas Cornbread, we'll hear what happens when young Carla eats a sugar cookie meant for Santa the night before Christmas and tries to make things right. Then, Dr. Harris and Chef Carla will discuss a new edition of A Kwanzaa Keepsake, refreshed from its original publishing in 1995 with new essays and a new foreword by Hall herself.
Stick around to get signed copies of Carla and the Christmas Cornbread, A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook, and Dr. Harris' seminal High On The Hog, all perfect for gifting.
Admission is free so bring your friends and family to celebrate with us! In addition to a curated selection of retail items from BEM and fellow vendors, there will be treats, warm beverages, and door prizes hosted by Platform. RSVP here.
More about the books
Carla and the Christmas Cornbread
Christmas is Carla's favorite holiday of the year. She goes to her grandparents' house and eats grandma's special recipe--a perfectly delicious cornbread. She listens to her grandpa Doc's marvelous stories about traveling the world. And, best of all, she spends lots of time with her family.
But when Carla accidentally takes a bite out of Santa's sugar cookie, she thinks she's ruined Christmas. How will Santa know to stop at their house if they don't leave him a midnight snack? With her grandmother's help, Carla comes up with a plan, but will it be enough to save Christmas?
A Kwanzaa Keepsake and Cookbook: Celebrating the Holiday with Family, Community, and Tradition
From the award-winning author of High on the Hog—inspiration for the “energetic, emotional, and deeply nuanced” (The New York Times) Netflix series of the same name—comes a new and updated edition of A Kwanzaa Keepsake, another important exploration of African American culture, food, and family, featuring recipes and stories to help this generation create unique holiday traditions.
Now with a new introduction by award-winning writer and iconic culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, a foreword by chef and television personality Carla Hall, revised recipes and stories, and a fresh new package, A Kwanzaa Keepsake offers proverbs, ceremonies, family projects, inspirational biographies, blessings, and of course, wonderful recipes. Structured around the seven days of Kwanzaa and the virtues each day represents, Harris shares a themed feast for each night, designed to reflect the principle of the day.
More about the participants
Carla Hall
Jessica B. Harris holds a PhD from NYU and taught English at Queens College for more than thirty years. She lectures internationally. She is the author of High on the Hog, which inspired the hit 2021 Netflix show of the same name. She is also the author of a memoir, My Soul Looks Back, as well as twelve cookbooks. Her articles have appeared in Vogue, Food & Wine, Essence, and The New Yorker, among other publications. She has made numerous television and radio appearances and has been profiled in The New York Times. Considered one of the preeminent scholars of the food of the African Diaspora, Harris has been inducted into the James Beard Who’s Who in Food and Beverage in America, she received the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, and an Augie Award from the Culinary Institute of America in 2022. She also received an honorary doctorate from Johnson & Wales University and recently helped the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture to conceptualize its cafeteria.
More about BEM
BEM | books & more is a literary destination at the intersection of food and Blackness. Established by two sisters in January 2021 as an online bookstore, BEM is proud to serve as a home for readers, writers, cooks, and eaters passionate about Black cultures in all their diversity. Taking an expansive approach to the nexus of food, literature, and culture, BEM celebrates Black food by bringing works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry for readers of all ages into conversation with cookbooks and culinary studies to explore how what feeds us defines us.
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