Virtual Book Talk: The World Eats Here

Join us on YouTube Live for a free virtual book talk to meet the duo behind NYC’s famous Queens Night Market and the authors of The World Eats Here, a brand-new, debut cookbook celebrating the lives and recipes of immigrant vendor-chefs!

When: Tuesday, April 28th; 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm ET

Where: https://youtu.be/wtk45kaxF_A

Authors/ Panelists:

Storm Garner was DC-born, Paris-raised, and based in New York City since working on her first La Mama, ETC theater production in 2006. She is a multi-disciplined artist—writer, filmmaker, designer, actor, musician—with a BA in Nonfiction Creative Writing from Columbia University and current student in Columbia’s Oral History Master’s Program. She created the video for the Queens Night Market’s first Kickstarter campaign and the stories included in this book are derived from her long-form interviews with participating vendors for her thesis The Queens Night Market Vendor Stories Oral History Project, which will be publicly archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. This year Storm is conducting a second round of interviews (remotely) with Queens Night Market vendors to document how they are coping with the current COVID-19 crisis. All the interviews in this multi-year project will be indexed and archived and put online for public educational purposes at the Nunn Center for Oral History and this years’ interviews will additionally be archived locally with the Queens Public Library in their Queens Memory COVID-19 Project. 

John Wang was born and raised in Texas, but his love affair with night markets started during the childhood summers he spent visiting Taiwan. A graduate of Yale’s law and business school (and triple-major from the University of Michigan), John quit his high-paying M&A attorney job at a premier law firm after paying off his student loans and in 2015 pursued his dream of creating what came to be the Queens Night Market. Now in its 5th year, the popular event averages over 12,000 visitors every summer Saturday—and has welcomed over 1 million visitors since its inception. Along with his wife Storm Garner, he is co-author of the market’s cookbook The World Eats Here.

The World Eats Here:

On summer Saturday nights in Queens, New York, scents from Moldova to Mexico whet thousands of appetites as people gather to enjoy food from over 40 countries. Welcome to the Queens Night Market. It’s had well over a million visitors since 2015, and there’s little wonder why: The food is delicious, the energy infectious—and the $6 price cap, irresistible.

In the new book, The World Eats Here, immerse yourself in stories and recipes that were born in the Market. You’ll meet authors Wanda Chiu of Hong Kong Street Food whose panfried noodles remind her of cold winter mornings before school. And Liia Minnebaeva who will blow you away with her Bashkir farm cheese donuts—a treat from her childhood in Oktyabrsky in western Russia.

The book is a celebration of the creations and lives of Market vendors, first- and second-generation immigrants living in Queens—the most diverse urban area on Earth!