Julia Turshen Books in Order

If you want her classic home-cooking entry point: Small Victories → Now & Again → What Goes with What
If you want healthy comfort food: Simply Julia → What Goes with What
If you want food stories with history and travel: In Bibi's Kitchen → Feed the Resistance
If you want baking and kitchen confidence: The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook → Small Victories

Julia Turshen grew up in New York in a secular Jewish family, with parents who worked in design and a brother at home. Her house was not a restaurant kitchen, but cookbooks fascinated her early. She has said that, as a kid, she skipped toy ovens and went straight to the real stove, and by 13 she was even running a tiny restaurant out of her family home.

Food got to her early.

Her maternal grandparents ran a bread bakery in Brooklyn, a piece of family history that stayed with her even though she never met them. She taught herself to cook through books, television, and practice, and between high school and college she worked at a bakery in Port Chester, New York. That mix of family memory and hands-on work helps explain why her recipes feel both grounded and welcoming.

Turshen did not go to culinary school. She studied English at Barnard College, where she also interned in the food world, including magazine, television, and cookbook jobs. Right after graduation, she took a one-way ticket to Spain to work as an assistant on a companion cookbook for a PBS food travel series. When the original writer left the project, Turshen was given the chance to write the book herself.

That was the opening she needed.

From there she became one of those behind-the-scenes people whose work quietly turns up everywhere. She coauthored and collaborated on cookbooks with people including Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dana Cowin, Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez, and Hawa Hassan, while also working as a private chef to pay the bills. Books such as The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook and In Bibi's Kitchen show her ease with collaboration and her interest in food as culture, not just instruction. In Bibi's Kitchen later won a James Beard Award.

Her first solo cookbook, Small Victories, arrived in 2016 and made her a favorite guide for home cooks who want clear directions without a lot of fuss. After that came Feed the Resistance, which brought food and civic action to the same table, Now & Again, which turns leftovers into actual dinner plans, Simply Julia, a more personal book built around healthy comfort food, and What Goes with What, a chart-driven cookbook that helps people cook with more confidence and less guesswork.

Across all of these books, the through line is pretty clear. Turshen writes for real life: weeknights, imperfect fridges, modest budgets, changing appetites, and the hope that cooking can make a day feel steadier. Readers tend to come to her for simple recipes, but they stay for her calm tone, her flexibility, and her belief that feeding people is tied to care, community, and fairness. In 2026 she added fiction to the mix with Down to Earth, a queer romance set around a vegetable farm.

Her work off the page matters, too. Turshen founded Equity At The Table, an inclusive directory for women and nonbinary people in food, and she has long tied cooking to broader questions of access and justice. She also hosts the podcast Keep Calm & Cook On, teaches online cooking classes, and writes a regular newsletter for home cooks who want useful ideas without shame or posturing.

She now lives in the Hudson Valley with her spouse, Grace, and their pets. She farms part-time, still teaches, and, in one detail that somehow makes perfect sense once you know her work, she is also a competitive powerlifter. It all fits the same picture: practical, strong, and more interested in doing the work than performing it.