KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Verlyn Klinkenborg : The E.B. and Katharine White Memorial Lecture

Verlyn Klinkenborg was born in Colorado in 1952 and raised in Iowa and California. He graduated from Pomona College and received a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. He is the author of Making Hay (1986), The Last Fine Time (1991), The Rural Life (2003), and Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006). His work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Mother Jones and The New York Times Magazine, among others. He has taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University and Harvard University and is a visiting professor at Bard College and the visiting writer in residence at Pomona College . Klinkenborg has been a member of the editorial board of the New York Times since 1997, where his essays on rural life appear regularly. He is the recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship. Mr. Klinkenborg and his family live on a small farm in rural New York State .

Ruth Reichl joined Gourmet as Editor in Chief in April 1999. She came to the magazine from The New York Times, where she had been the restaurant critic since 1993. As chef and co-owner of The Swallow Restaurant from 1974 to 1977, she played a part in the culinary revolution that took place in Berkeley, California . In the years that followed, she served as restaurant critic for New West and California magazines. In 1984, she became restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times, where she was also named food editor.

Ms. Reichl began writing about food in 1972, when she published Mmmmm: A Feastiary. Since then, she has authored the critically acclaimed, best-selling memoirs Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires, which have been translated into 16 languages. She is the editor of The Modern Library Food Series, which currently includes ten books. She has also written the introductions to Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur (1996) and The Measure of Her Powers: An M.F.K. Fisher Reader (2000), and the foreword for Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji (2007). She is the editor of Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet, Remembrance of Things Paris: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet, The Gourmet Cookbook, released September 2004, and History in a Glass: Sixty Years of Wine Writing from Gourmet, 2006. Her lecture "Why Food Matters," delivered in October 2005, was published in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Volume 27, in 2006. Ms. Reichl is the executive producer of-and makes frequent appearances in-Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, public television's 20-episode series, which debuted in October 2006. She is also executive producer of Garlic and Sapphires , a Fox 2000 film based on her memoirs and to be produced by Cary Brokaw's Avenue Pictures.

Ms. Reichl hosted Eating Out Loud, three specials on Food Network, covering New York (2002), San Francisco (2003), and Miami (2003). She is a regular host with Leonard Lopate for a live monthly food show on WNYC radio in New York .

Ms. Reichl has been honored with four James Beard Awards (two for restaurant criticism, in 1996 and 1998; one for journalism, in 1994; and Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America, 1984) and with numerous awards from the Association of American Food Journalists. In 2007, she was named Adweek 's Editor of the Year. She received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, presented by the Missouri School of Journalism, in October 2007. She is also the recipient of the YWCA's Elizabeth Cutter Morrow Award. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and lives in New York City with her husband, Michael Singer, a television news producer, and their son.