A Season in the Other Southern France

Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and foodwriter, as well as a French speaker and shameless Francophile. His writing has won multiple awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Artful Living magazine. His first book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France, was published in July 2024, edited by Francis Lam. It is the story of his family's gradual (then precipitous) acceptance into a tiny Languedoc winemaking village, of his bottom-up education in Mediterranean food and wine, and of a hard-won self-acceptance in mid-life. Hoffman shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, roughly 80,000 honeybees, and a nesting pair of sandhill cranes who summer in the backyard.

Come join James Beard Award-winning food writer and author, Steve Hoffman, to talk about his new book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.

Steve will talk about the challenges of adjusting to life in a tiny, hot, insular, southern French winemaking village with his American family. He will talk about his children's experiences attending local French écoles primaires and collèges, after elementary careers in American French Immersion schools. He will talk about his self-administered education in Mediterranean food and cooking, and his experiences picking grapes and working in a village winery in the heart of rural Languedoc – the "largest vineyard in the world."

This free event is at 1pm PT and is presented in partnership with the Fédération of Alliances Françaises. Register below to reserve a spot in the zoom room.

Register here Register here