Amy Thielen is a two-time James Beard award-winning writer and chef. She’s the author of three books: The New Midwestern Table, Give a Girl a Knife (a memoir), and her latest cookbook, Company: The Radical Art of Cooking for Others—out August 29 from W.W. Norton.

Born and raised in northern Minnesota, she graduated from Macalester College with a degree in English and then spent two years living in an off-grid cabin near her hometown, gardening and short-order cooking at a diner on Main Street (naturally.) In 1999, she moved to New York City to go to culinary school and cook professionally. After completing what can only be described as a culinary tour of duty through Manhattan’s top fine dining kitchens, she moved back home to Minnesota in 2009 and began writing. Her cooking show, Heartland Table, co-produced by Random House Television and Lidia Bastianich’s Tavola Productions, premiered on Food Network in 2013 and ran for two seasons.

A former contributing editor at Saveur, Amy has written for and been featured in Food & Wine, The New York Times, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Food52, and The Wall Street Journal, among others, and appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, Minnesota Public Radio, The Splendid Table, and Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods. Amy speaks to organizations and nonprofits about home cooking, writing, and rural foodways, and volunteers locally to support access and engagement in the fine arts. In her spare time, she can be found weeding her vegetable and flower gardens, talking on the phone in her kitchen, and of course on the internet. She lives in northern Minnesota with her family—visual artist Aaron Spangler, their son Hank, and their dog, Hilly.