Rick Nichols was a member of the editorial board and writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 30 years, lastly as a food columnist whose pieces have been regularly anthologized in the collection, Best Food Writing. Local foodways were the the heart of most of those columns, but he did pieces from Montana on huckleberry politics, from Hong Kong on the toll of avian flu, and in Mexico, on street fare in the Baja. Before joining the Inquirer, he was state editor of The Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and later taught journalism courses at Temple University. With his wife, Nancy Szokan, an editor at The Washington Post, he co-taught a seminar in 2004 at the University of Montana entitled “Truth-telling in the Age of Opinion.” He continues to write for local publications, plays a mean Scrooge in Narberth's annual Dickens Festival, and cooks a weekly staff meal with Sal Vetri at Amis, the Roman-style trattoria at 13th and Pine.

His radio commentaries are available at www.whyy.org/91FM.

To read archived print work go to www.philly.com/philly/columnists/rick_nichols/

Email: richard.nichols@comcast.net