Nina Mukerjee Furstenau is a journalist, author, and editor of the FoodStory book series for the University of Iowa Press. She was a Fulbright Global research scholar (2018-19), is on the board of directors for Media for Change, and has won the MFK Fisher Book Award and the Grand Prize Award for Culture/Culinary Writing from Les Dames d'Escoffier International, a Kansas Notable Book award, and more.
Nina hosts Canned Peaches in 2023, a podcast created with NPR-affiliate KBIA, The Missouri School of Journalism, The Missouri Humanities Council, and Harvest Public Media. The series focuses on the histories of iconic foods/ingredients in the Midwest with an interest in showing how we are already entwined on the plate. In another effort to connect cultures through the understanding of food and identity, Nina and co-editor SeAnne Safaii-Waite wrote Food and Culture, 8th edition (Cengage, 2023), the market-leading text for cultural foods courses. It is designed to help health professionals, chefs, others in the food service industry, and anyone who hopes to work effectively with members of different ethnic and religious groups in a culturally sensitive manner. Other works include: Green Chili & Other Impostors (Chilies, Chhana and Rasa in India), with a focus on how foods traveled around the world with India, especially under colonialism, as a nexus, the award-wining Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland, as well as Tasty! Mozambique (USAID, 2018), Savor Missouri: River Hills Country Food and Wine (Acclaim, 2013), and numerous stories and essays for newspapers and magazines. She engages as a speaker at conferences such as NonfictionNow, Unbound Book, Iowa City Book Festival, Food, Fork and Pen, and more.
Nina served in the U.S. Peace Corps (1984-86) and was one of its delegates for the U.N. World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya. She was director of Food Systems Communication for the University of Missouri's Science and Agricultural Journalism program (2010-2018), and completed food/nutrition projects in Ghana and Mozambique for USAID and the McKnight Foundation. She was editor, then publisher of three business magazines, has served as a judge for national journalism competitions such as the James Beard Media Awards, the Lowell Thomas Travel Writing competition, and others. Nina received an M.A. in English/creative writing and a bachelor's in magazine journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.
