Crescent Dragonwagon, the author of the James Beard Award-winning Passionate Vegetarian, The Cornbread Gospels, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, many children’s books, and two novels, has just completed Bean by Bean.
Dragonwagon is a Southern Yankee: though born in New York, for 18 years she was innkeeper/chef/co-owner of Dairy Hollow House, an acclaimed country inn in the Ozark Mountain community of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she resided for 36 years. But, since 2002, she has lived in Westminster West, Vermont.
Dragonwagon has the distinction of having prepared beans and cornbread for a president (Bill Clinton), titled royalty (Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia), a world-renowned feminist (Betty Friedan) and Marilyn Monroe’s first biographer (Maurice Zolotow). She teaches two writing workshops, Deep Feast: Writing the World through Food, and Fearless Writing, around the world (the latter, she teaches once a year, in the Whole Enchilada version, from her own home hilltop in the Green Mountains). She has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, TVFN, & CNN.
She lives, writes, and cooks in the 1795 farmhouse which once belonged to her aunt, at which she spent summers when a child. She shares the place with her partner, filmmaker David Koff, and, often, numerous well-fed friends. An ardent gardener, she’s currently growing 4 different varieties of bush beans, and 5 of pole beans. .. under the supervision of her large and amiable tabby cat, Cattywhompus (who can usually be found rolling in the catmint).