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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Bryant Terry

We need to open a transparent dialogue about food insecurity, structural racism, and poverty.

Award-winning author of Black Food | James Beard Leadership Award Winner | Founder of 4 Color Books

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BRYANT TERRY is a chef, food justice activist, and critically acclaimed author fighting for a more just and sustainable food system. Groundbreaking and rich, his work illuminates the intersections that exist today between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity, in order to pave a new, better path forward. In his new book Black Food, Bryant offers a stunning and deeply heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity, capturing the broad and divergent voices of the African Diaspora in a way that’s never been done before.

Bryant Terry is a multidisciplinary artist, chef, publisher, and author. His studio practice bridges cooking, sculpture, sound, video, and social practice to explore resilience, cultural memory, and liberation. From 2015 to 2022, he served as the inaugural Chef-in-Residence at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora, curating dynamic programming connecting food, health, farming, art, and activism.

His art and ideas have been featured at leading institutions including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Underground Museum, The Birmingham Museum of Art, Worth Ryder Art Gallery, and The Hammer Museum at UCLA.

As founder and editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books (an imprint of Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House), he collaborates with visionary creatives of color to produce visually stunning nonfiction books. Notable 4 Color titles include The Scarr’s Pizza Cookbook by Scarr Pimentel, My Cambodia by Nite Yun with Tien Nguyen, The Black Yearbook by Adraint Khadafhi Bereal, and The Memory of Taste by Tu David Phu and Soleil Ho. Forthcoming works include cookbooks by Carla Hall, Nasim Lahbichi, Rashad Frazier, and Amethyst Ganaway.

Terry’s achievements in the publishing world include authoring five highly acclaimed cookbooks, editing and curating an anthology, Black Food, and serving as the editor of The Best American Food and Travel Writing 2025. His work has earned him prestigious honors, including a James Beard Award, an NAACP Image Award, and an Art of Eating Prize. His book Black Food received widespread praise and was hailed as the most critically acclaimed American cookbook of 2021.

Terry is the recipient of numerous grants and residencies, including those from the Headlands Center for the Arts (Graduate Fellowship), Open Society Foundations (Community Fellowship), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (Food and Society Fellowship), UC Berkeley’s Black Studies Collaboratory (Artist Fellowship), and the East Bay Fund for Artists.

Terry completed an MFA in Art Practice at UC Berkeley in 2025. He holds an MA in History from NYU and received his culinary training at the Natural Gourmet Institute. He presents frequently around the country as a keynote speaker at community events, conferences, and colleges.

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Speech Topics

Politics & Society

Food JusticeAt the Intersection of Food, Politics, Poverty, Public Health and the Environment

How can we provide healthy food choices for all Americans, regardless of income, geography or race? In this interactive talk, Bryant Terry shows us how the food we eat directly affects issues such as poverty, sustainability, and structural racism. How can we get healthier food into low income urban areas? What can each of us—whether urban dweller or suburbanite—do to eat healthier? And how will these choices affect everything from the environment to social justice? Terry doesn’t push faddish or prescribed diets. But he will occasionally sing and even cook a meal to demonstrate how simple (and delicious) making better food choices can be. Fusing food justice and personal history, Terry shows us how to improve access to fresh food in our communities: whether that community is your campus, your workplace, your neighbourhood, or just your own set of friends gathered in the kitchen.