Kayla Stewart is a James Beard Award-winning food and travel journalist, cookbook author, and Senior Editor at Eater. Her writing has appeared in Food & Wine, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Saveur, and more, where she explores themes of culinary heritage, Black foodways, and global food culture. Stewart’s storytelling is known for its depth, warmth, and commitment to highlighting underrepresented voices in the food world.

She co-authored the New York Times bestselling and James Beard-nominated cookbook Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island with Emily Meggett, and is currently working on a new cookbook with chef Christopher Williams focused on Black cuisine in Texas. Her essay “The Sweetest Harvest” won the 2023 James Beard Foundation Profile Award, and “Teach a Man to Fish” was featured in Best American Food Writing 2023. Stewart also served as a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia and was awarded the UC Berkeley–11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship.

When she’s not traveling for stories, Stewart splits her time between Houston and New York City. She holds a joint master’s degree in International Relations and Journalism from NYU and previously taught food writing at the university. Her work continues to shape how readers understand food as a lens for culture, history, and identity.