VIRGINIA: UVA Press cancels book critical of leading Southern food figures
In early 2025, University of Virginia Press announced the forthcoming release of “The Strange Career of Cornbread Nationalism.” The book “debunking the mythologized South of the food writing world” would hit shelves in October, nearly a full decade after the project first provoked chatter among chroniclers of the region’s cuisine.
Its authors, Jon Smith of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Scott Romine of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, are literature scholars who take issue with the idea of the South as a distinct, coherent cultural region. Food writing, they believe, is particularly rife with Romantic ideas of Southern identity. Further, they maintain no organization better personified that misplaced Romanticism than the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) and its longtime director, John T. Edge.
The SFA, founded in 1999 and based at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, “documents, studies, and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South,” according to its mission statement. The organization has been central in shaping the conversation about Southern food, influencing what stories are told about the region, and who tells those stories.
“Every word of that organizational name embeds incorrect premises. Every word is wrong,” Romine said.
University of Virginia Press’ planned cover for The Strange Career of Cornbread Nationalism/ Provided
There is no single, unified Southern culture, he and Smith argue. Foodways is a new guise for the Romantic notion of folkways, the customs and traditions that define a group and limit who can belong to it. And Alliance suggests we’re on the same team in a region where co-option has been more prevalent than cooperation.
When Smith and Romine began writing “The Strange Career of Cornbread Nationalism” a decade ago, Edge was still leading the organization, a role he had held since the group’s founding.
“He was synonymous with the Southern Foodways Alliance,” Smith said. “When you talk about SFA, you’re talking about Edge. When you talk about Edge, you’re talking about the SFA.”
Scott Romine/ Provided
Jon Smith/ Provided
Edge stepped down as director of the SFA in 2022. His decision came in the wake of public calls for his resignation amid criticism of the lack of racial diversity among the group’s staff and leadership, and accusations of sexism and “bro culture” in its programming. Edge is a white man; at the time of his resignation, nine out of 10 of the SFA’s senior staff were white.
After giving up his title, he was appointed SFA “founding director,” a role in which he “fundraises and helps with creative efforts,” according to the current staff directory. Also at the University of Mississippi, he is developing the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency. Edge has remained a leading interpreter of Southern food for a popular audience as columnist for Garden & Gun and host of “TrueSouth,” a documentary series on ESPN’s SEC Network.
“For God’s sake, he’s just the most egregious example of schlock that I can imagine,” Smith continued. “The hyperbole. Every fucking trip to a restaurant has to be a fucking pilgrimage. On and on, we weave these tethers with the past, and this pitmaster is doing what his daddy did, and it’s all just this junk. If you’re a scholar, that’s really frustrating.”
When asked to respond, Edge deferred to Wright Thompson, his friend and executive producer of “TrueSouth.”
John T. Edge/ Provided
“This is subjective work and everyone is entitled to their opinion,” Thompson wrote in a text message. He urged people to watch the next episode of their program to judge Edge’s work for themselves.
Smith and Romine detailed their objections in a concise, 100-page manuscript that critiques Edge, the SFA, the notion that land matters deeply to Southerners, the assumption that cast iron has anything to do with region, and, ultimately, the idea that Southerners are different from other Americans.
But the strength of their thesis hasn’t been widely debated because UVA Press—after announcing the book on online retail sites—never published it.
After delaying the publication date twice, UVA Press in February 2026 sent Smith and Romine a letter canceling their contract. The director of the press, Eric Brandt, pointed to “emails sent to us by an associate of one of those criticized in your manuscript.” Brandt cited the cost of defending against a potential lawsuit, which he wrote could “easily exceed $100,000” even if the press prevailed.
According to internal documents, the person Brandt worried might sue was Edge. Any such fears were unfounded, Edge said.
“Regarding their manuscript,” he wrote in an email to The Food Section, “I never contemplated litigation, much less pursued it.”
–-thefoodsection.com
