Betty Ellen Fussell (; born July 28, 1927) is an American writer and is the author of 12 books, ranging from biography to cookbooks, food history and memoir. Over the last 50 years, her essays on food, travel and the arts have appeared in scholarly journals, popular magazines and newspapers as varied as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Vogue, Food & Wine, Metropolitan Home and Gastronomica. Her memoir, My Kitchen Wars, was performed in Hollywood and New York as a one-woman show by actress Dorothy Lyman. Her most recent book is Eat Live Love Die, and she is now working on How to Cook a Coyote: A Manual of Survival. Personal life Fussell was born in Riverside, California, on July 28, 1927, where she grew up. She married her college sweetheart Paul Fussell in 1949 and had two children, Rosalind and Sam Fussell. In 1981 the couple divorced. Fussell has traveled widely throughout Europe, the Near East, Africa, India, China, Russia, Latin America, Southeast Asia. For many years, she lived in New York City. She resides in Santa Barbara, California. Education She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Pomona College in 1948, an M.A. from Radcliffe College in 1951 and a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University in 1974. Her thesis focused on English Tragicomedy in the Renaissance. Teaching career From 1952 to 1978 Fussell taught courses in English Literature, specializing in Shakespeare and the literature of comedy, drama, and film at a variety of colleges and universities, including Connecticut College, Douglass College, Rutgers University, and the New School University. She began teaching classes focusing on food writing and food history beginning in 1993 at Columbia University, the French Culinary Institute, NYU's Food Studies program, and the New School University's Food Studies department. Editor and food historian Early on in her career, Fussell edited many of her former husband Paul Fussell's works of literary criticism and military history. She became a columnist for Country Journal, a contributing editor to Lear’s, the editor of AIWF publication, Wine, Food & the Arts (1996, 1997), and is a current contributing editor to Food Arts. She briefly held a position as an editorial consultant for Atlantic Monthly Press. Fussell has frequently appeared on national and cable networks, including the start-up of the Food Network. She has lectured on American food history at many venues, such as