Von Diaz is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian, food historian, and author of Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking (Chronicle 2024) and Coconuts & Collards: Recipes and Stories from Puerto Rico to the Deep South. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Atlanta, GA, she explores food culture, memory, and ancestry. In addition to her debut culinary memoir, and forthcoming book, she has contributed recipes and essays to a number of cookbooks and anthologies. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Bon Appétit, NPR, Food & Wine Magazine, Eater, Condé Nast Traveler, and Epicurious. She has also been a reporter for NPR, StoryCorps, The Splendid Table, WNYC, PRI’s The World, and Feet in 2 Worlds.In addition to food journalism, she has also worked for a number of institutions dedicated to storytelling, arts and culture, and social justice. She is Senior Producer at StoryCorps, where she produces radio broadcasts for NPR’s Morning Edition, and was an Editor for Un(re)solved—an Emmy Award-winning multimedia collaboration with Frontline. She has taught food studies and oral history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Previously, she was the Lehman Brady visiting professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Before arriving at StoryCorps, she was the Editor of Feet in 2 Worlds, which brings the work of immigrant and ethnic media journalists from communities across the U.S. to public radio and the web. Previously, she was the Marketing and Communications Manager for El Museo del Barrio, a celebrated Puerto Rican and Latino museum and cultural institution in New York City. In addition to her teaching and journalistic work, she’s led story research and development for an original documentary film series, a series of animated shorts, and podcast for Google. She is a frequent public speaker, and in 2015 she gave the TEDx talk, “Every Dish Has a Story: Mapping My Food History,” exploring how cooking and eating reflect our deepest cultural roots. In addition, she’s taught food writing and audio production workshops at New York University and The New School, among others. Von received a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Agnes Scott College. She went on to receive a dual M.A. in Journalism and Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University, where she completed a Tinker Field Research Fellowship to record oral histories of elder LGBTQ communities in Havana, Cuba. Read more about this authorRead less about this author