The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #92: Laurie Woolever

"I wasted a lot of time as a young person, when I could have been writing, so I try not to waste time now thinking about worrying about not writing, and just get to the page."

Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.

Here’s the 92nd installment, featuring author, editor, public speaker, former cook, and Anthony Bourdain collaborator

Laurie Woolever

, author most recently of Care and Feeding: A Memoir. -Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

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Laurie Woolever; photo by David Scott Holloway.

Laurie Woolever is an author, editor, public speaker, and former cook. She has written for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, and others. Woolever is a graduate of Cornell University and the French Culinary Institute. A former editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator, she has co-authored two books with the late Anthony Bourdain, for whom she worked as an assistant for nine years. She published an oral biography of Bourdain in 2021, co-authored a cookbook with the legendary baker Richard Hart in 2024, and published her memoir, Care and Feeding, in March 2025. Laurie co-hosts a food-focused podcast, Carbface for Radio, with affable shit-stirrer Chris Thornton, and is a writer for Flaming Hydra, a creator-owned newsletter collective.

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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I am 51 and I have been writing since I learned to read and write, in kindergarten.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

My latest book is called Care and Feeding: A Memoir, and it was published on March 11, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

This is the second book for which I am the sole author; the first was Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography. I have co-authored three books (Appetites: A Cookbook and World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, with Anthony Bourdain, and Richard Hart Bread with Richard Hart).

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

Care and Feeding is a memoir. In early conversations with my agent about what kind of book I should write, I suggested an essay collection, and she told me that those are much harder to sell, and get smaller advances, and I am really glad to have been financially incentive to attempt the straight memoir form, which I found more challenging than a series of discrete essays, but ultimately, I suspect, more rewarding to have finished.

Care and Feeding is the story of my career, from just after college through a series of jobs in the food world, including working as the assistant to two very high-profile men, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. It’s a story that addresses fame, addiction, love, sex, parenting, cooking, travel, loss and recovery. It is very relatable and, I think, very funny.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

Care and Feeding is the story of my career, from just after college through a series of jobs in the food world, including working as the assistant to two very high-profile men, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. It’s a story that addresses fame, addiction, love, sex, parenting, cooking, travel, loss and recovery. It is very relatable and, I think, very funny.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I have always loved writing, and I have always loved praise, and once I started getting praise for my writing, as a kid, I was hooked on the idea of being a writer. I took as many creative writing courses as I could in college and did workshops after that. I got my professional start as a freelance food writer, which eventually led to editor positions at two magazines. I was lucky to help create a number of books with high-profile authors, all the while living a colorful life of excess, about which I would keep journals. I believed that I had a story to tell, with a number of relatable themes, and fortunately I was able to convince one publisher to take a chance on me.

Order the book…

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

In some ways the hardest part was writing the proposal, figuring out what parts of the story to highlight, and how to thread the needle of good storytelling while still leaving some things private, for myself and the people whose stories are part of my narrative. Once I had a publishing contract, I found the prospect of writing the whole thing to be incredibly daunting, but fortunately I had experience with breaking down huge book projects into small chunks, so once I mapped out how much I would have to accomplish each week or month, it felt manageable.

As of this writing, I haven’t gone through it yet, but having it out in the world, and having people react to it—critics, fans of the high-profile people I write about, just anyone with an opinion and a keyboard—I think that’s going to be difficult, so I’m going to try not engage with reviews, criticism, or comments. I am proud of the book I wrote, I think it’s a good piece of writing, and ideally that will be enough.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

Early on in the process of writing the proposal, I read Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, and continued to refer back to it while writing the book. Her suggestions for writing about other people, ideally without damage to feelings and relationships, are smart and super-valuable. I offered certain people the chance to read segments about them, and if they had feedback, I took it into account. The only change anyone requested came from my sister, who read an early draft of the whole thing and asked me to leave out one thing, which I did.

In some ways the hardest part was writing the proposal, figuring out what parts of the story to highlight, and how to thread the needle of good storytelling while still leaving some things private, for myself and the people whose stories are part of my narrative. Once I had a publishing contract, I found the prospect of writing the whole thing to be incredibly daunting, but fortunately I had experience with breaking down huge book projects into small chunks, so once I mapped out how much I would have to accomplish each week or month, it felt manageable.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

I read so many memoirs before and during the long process of writing my own book. Claire Dederer’s Love and Trouble was a big inspiration, as were the ideas about “bad men” and how to deal our fandom of their work in Monsters. Erika Schickel’s The Big Hurt gave me a lot to think about when writing about marriage, motherhood and infidelity. I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel and Abandon Me by Melissa Febos were helpful when thinking and writing about romantic obsession. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby is a flawless example of how to turn hurt and humiliation into comedy.

And more than a decade ago, Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat made me wish for the courage to tell my own story. I reached out to him when it was published and asked how he had the balls to write about his family and he said, basically, “You just have to do it. Be honest, tell your story and have faith that they will still love you, no matter what.”

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Because it was so useful to me, I would direct people to pretty much all of Mary Karr’s advice from The Art of Memoir. As far as finding it daunting, for me, writing a proposal first was a good warm-up to the actual book. It takes time to get the proposal right, at least a few months, and in that process, you get the chance to really sharpen the focus on what story you’re telling, so you end up with the sturdy skeleton of your book. I would also say that your friends, your family, former co-workers, your diaries, your old emails, letters, photo albums – all of whom and what you have collected kept close in your life should be pressed into the service of telling your story well and completely.

I had a lot of great conversations with people from different eras of my life, to make sure I was getting details right and asking them if they remembered this or that incident. Our memories hold the major plot points, but all the little details that make a story really engaging, those sometimes have to be taken out of storage, with the help of others, or excavated from the archive.

What do you love about writing? 

I love that writing helps me to make sense of an experience or situation. I recently took my son on a vacation and I had a lot of mixed feelings about it—it was expensive, I wasn’t sure if he was having fun, I was cranky about a million little things—and writing an essay about it helped me to put it into perspective, and allowed me to make fun of myself a little bit.

What frustrates you about writing?

I find it frustrating when I see the craft of writing undermined by AI. I get frustrated when I see bad writing published, especially in the context of journalism. On a personal level, I can get frustrated with myself when I am not producing as fast as I think I “should,” or as fast as other people are able to write. I frustrate myself by being too susceptible to distraction, or to inner criticism.

What about writing surprises you?

I love the feeling of re-reading something that I’ve written and set aside and, not necessarily forgotten about, but stopped thinking about for a while, that sense of, “Did I write this? It’s actually not bad!” I am continually amazed that I have been able to almost squeak out a living from writing for the last six years.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times? 

If I have a deadline, I do try and get at least an hour of writing in as early as possible in the day, and then I will take a break and circle back to it throughout the rest of the day. I used to rule out writing after dinner because I felt my brain wasn’t functioning at a high enough level, but lately I have been able to continue working in the evening, sometimes. Now that I have successfully produced a few full-length books, I have less anxiety about being able to produce, and less superstition about writer’s block.

I wasted a lot of time as a young person, when I could have been writing, so I try not to waste time now thinking about worrying about not writing, and just get to the page. I have come to understand the value of the messy draft, whereas I used to be clenched in the pursuit of immediate perfection on a sentence level, which was paralyzing, exhausting, and counterproductive.

Early on in the process of writing the proposal, I read Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, and continued to refer back to it while writing the book. Her suggestions for writing about other people, ideally without damage to feelings and relationships, are smart and super-valuable. I offered certain people the chance to read segments about them, and if they had feedback, I took it into account. The only change anyone requested came from my sister, who read an early draft of the whole thing and asked me to leave out one thing, which I did.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

I cook a lot, mostly just to feed myself and my son, but on good days I consider this a creative pursuit. I make a podcast, Carbface for Radio, with a partner. We’ll write questions for guests, and topic to discuss, and we are very involved in the editing, which can be creative and fun. I find that reading books and magazines and newspapers, especially analog versions, and listening to audiobooks and interviews with smart people, is helpful to my process as a writer. It’s probably terrible for my attention span, but I do spend some time every day on social media, and I find creative fulfillment in making little jokes in my Instagram stories, and I love the camaraderie with funny and smart people in my DMs, some of whom I have never met in real life.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

I am working on a cookbook with chef Ryan Bartlow, who has an excellent Basque restaurant called Ernesto’s in New York, and I am working with a giant of the beverage world on his memoir proposal. I will continue to make my podcast and write monthly for Flaming Hydra. I love helping other tell their stories. I also love getting out in the world to talk about the restaurant business, cooking, drinking, sobriety, love and loss, which is to say, I am eager to be a (paid) public speaker for your town hall series, university, corporate conference, trade show, or rich person dinner party.

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Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.