Adrian Miller to bring Black Smoke & BBQ to the Longmont Public Library

NEWS RELEASE
LONGMONT PUBLIC LIBRARY
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Adrian Miller, known for “dropping knowledge like hot biscuits,”™ returns to the Longmont Public Library to talk about his latest book, Black Smoke: African-Americans and the United States of Barbecue. The program, Black Smoke & Bar-B-Que, will air via Webex on Thursday, May 6, from 7 to 8 pm. In Black Smoke, Miller chronicles how Black barbecuers, pitmasters, and restauranteurs helped develop this cornerstone of American foodways and how they are coming into their own today. It’s a smoke-filled story of Black perseverance, culinary innovation, and entrepreneurship. Though often pushed to the margins, African Americans have enriched a barbecue culture that has come to be embraced by all. Miller celebrates and restores the faces and stories of the men and women who have influenced this American cuisine.

Adrian Miller is a food writer, recovering attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. After graduating from Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Miller attended Stanford University, where he was resident counselor to PayPal founder David O. Sacks. Miller graduated with a bachelor's degree in international relations and next attended Georgetown University Law School, where he earned a J.D.

Miller served as a special assistant to the president in the Clinton Administration and deputy director of the President’s Initiative for One America. After the administration changed, Miller took an interest in food writing, inspired by John Egerton’s book Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History. The interest developed into his first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, which won the 2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship. It was also named a non-fiction honor book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Soul Food combines archival research with Miller's own travels (visiting 150 restaurants in 35 cities) to survey the way the food culture of the Southern United States has been "reestablished and reinterpreted" as African-Americans moved to other parts of the country, using the lens of diaspora to interpret this evolution.

While researching his first book, Miller began collecting historical traces of African-Americans who had staffed the White House kitchen. This became the subject of his second book, The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas, published in 2017. In the course of research, Miller was able to identify the names of 150 African-Americans who cooked in the White House, though there were many more who remain unnamed. The book earned a nomination for the 2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction.

Miller has presented multiple times before at the Library and typically sells-out.  Those interested are encouraged to register early. Registration is required and is available online at http://bit.ly/LibPrograms. After registering, attendees will receive email instructions for joining the program on Webex.

Unable to attend?  This program may be recorded and posted on the Library’s Watch Recent Programs webpage and YouTube playlist.

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