Mikenna Pierotti

• Mikenna's passion for stories where food, history, and sustainability intersect has drawn her across the world—to farm-to-table restaurants in Appalachia, cheesemakers in the Swiss Alps, pubs in Northern England—and to starting her own small farm on the Upper Coastal Plains of North Carolina.
• •She learned the art and soul of cooking, baking, and preserving from her family—Italian bakers and self-taught chefs.
• •She presented her thesis, "Birth of the Usual Rhetoric: Emerson and the Political Separation of Man from Environment," at the 2009 Environments of Imagination Conference at Susquehanna University, where the father of ecocriticism, Lawrence Buell, was the keynote speaker.

Experience

Although Mikenna started her career in marketing and communication at Corning Incorporated, her heart always drew her back to food, history, and sustainability. In graduate school, she focused her work on ecocriticism while branching out into lifestyle and food writing. Today, her bylines include gb&d Magazine, Sixtysix Magazine, Wonderful West Virginia, and WV Living, where her work has ranged from recipe testing to restaurant reviews to interviews with chefs, farmers, and sustainability experts. She's interviewed the director of sustainability and social responsibility at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., entrepreneurs and farmers working to end food deserts, as well as artists, chefs, and bartenders across the country. She strives to combine deep research and an approachable voice that connects readers with fascinating foods, histories, and cultures.

Education

Mikenna has a master's degree in English from West Virginia University, a bachelor's degree in English and history from Alfred University, and an associate degree in liberal arts from SUNY Corning Community College.