Gourmand Award food writing and media shortlists announced

Gourmand International, which hosts The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, recently announced its shortlists of nominees in food writing and media for 2019. The awards were founded in 1995 by Edouard Cointreau, and each year, they honor the best food and wine culture in print and digital media.

This shortlist is not exactly short, featuring hundreds of books, websites, and programs from 215 countries and regions, competing in 100 categories for food and 30 categories for drink. Many of the categories are reserved exclusively for digital publications.  Having so many categories allows more countries to compete, a goal for Gourmand International, which looks to the Olympics for inspiration for these awards. This is the only cookbook award competition that allows cookbooks of languages other than English to compete. In addition to opening the competition to multiple languages, the awards honor all types of media: print or digital, paid or free, private or public, trade publishers or self published, big or small. 

The shortlists are offered in four groups: Free Food Culture, Free Drink Culture, Print/Paid Food Culture, and Print/Paid Drink Culture. Cookbook highlights from this year’s shortlist include:

• The Jewelled Table: Cooking, Eating and Entertaining the Middle Eastern Way by Bethany Kehdy (read more about this book and enter our giveaway)
• Eating Local in the Fraser Valley: A Food-Lover’s Guide, Featuring Over 70 Recipes from Farmers, Producers, and Chefs by Angie Quaale
• Vegan Goodness: Feasts: Plant-Based Meals for Big and Little Gatherings by Jessica Prescott
• The Wicked Healthy Cookbook: Free. from. Animals. by Chad and Derek Sarno
• The Cook’s Atelier: Recipes, Techniques, and Stories from Our French Cooking School by Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini (learn more about this book in Jenny’s review post)