Clara Silverstein

Clara Silverstein is an author and long-time food writer in the Boston area. Her new cookbook, The Boston Chef’s Table (Three Forks / Globe Pequot Press), presents more than 100 contemporary recipes from the city's top chefs, including Jody Adams, Todd English, Barbara Lynch, and Ming Tsai – plus a few traditional favorites. Customized for home cooks, the recipes are presented with a profile about each chef, cooking hints, and Boston food lore.

Clara is also co-author of The New England Soup Factory Cookbook, a collection of recipes from chef and company founder Marjorie Druker (Thomas Nelson / Rutledge Hill Press). Marjorie built her Boston-based business by taking what people like to eat and turning it into a soup. Her restaurant, The New England Soup Factory, has won the Best of Boston award four times. The book offers 100 traditional and creative soup recipes, as well as sandwiches and salads.

A journalist for more than 20 years, Clara has published articles in Health magazine, Runner's World, American Heritage, and the Boston Globe. Formerly a food writer at the Boston Herald daily newspaper, Clara for 13 years informed readers about the city’s chefs, restaurants, and food trends. She also contributed several entries to the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink (Oxford University Press, November, 2004). She has also written for the Boston Phoenix, the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, the Boston Parents’ Paper, and Chicago Parent. She is currently the Boston food correspondent for the mobile media company go2.

Clara’s first book, the memoir White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation (University of Georgia Press) chronicles her experiences as a white child bused to predominantly African-American schools in the 1970s. Under a court desegregation order, she attended the public schools in Richmond, Virginia until she graduated from high school. She went on to earn a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University. Now she participates in anti-racism groups in the Boston area.

Since 2000, Clara has been Program Director of the Chautauqua Writers' Center, a series of poetry and prose writing workshops held each summer at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. Her poems have been published in literary journals including the Paterson Literary Review, Hiram Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, and Blackbird.

When not writing, Clara runs with far more enthusiasm than speed. She has finished two marathons, three triathlons, and several road races. She is currently training to run the 2008 Boston Marathon with a team that will raise money for Bottom Line, a program that helps Boston students apply to college, and works with them as they continue through higher education. Clara and her husband live near Boston with their two children, ages 14 and 17.