“Family mealtime has been a lifetime passion, and my most cherished memories with my children have been around our family dinner table,” says best-selling author and award winning journalist Julienne Smith.   Smith has taken her love for family dinners and created Food for Talk®, Bringing families together one conversation at a time, Running Press Books, a recipe box filled with 200 conversation starters for mealtime to encourage meaningful conversation and connection at dinner time.

“My greatest memories growing up are centered around our family dinners where our conversations were always interesting and diverse, and I wanted to re-create that with my own family,” explains Smith.

She launched Food for Talk in 2004 and since has created two new products in the successful series:  Food for Talk®: The Travel Edition and Food for Talk®: The Couples Edition, all geared toward bringing loved ones closer together through conversation and sharing.

In addition to publishing Food for Talk, Smith has done numerous speaking engagements and media interviews nationwide promoting the benefits to children of family mealtime including Radio Disney, Better Homes and Gardens, Women’s Day magazine, Redbook, First for Women, Chicago Tribune,  WCBS –TV – NY, and The Orange County Register, and more than 100 radio interviews in the US and Canada.

Prior to her work as a successful author, Smith was a television news reporter/anchor and radio talk show host, and has garnered numerous awards for her reporting including the prestigious Golden Mic Award for Best Investigative Reporting.   She earned her BA degree in Broadcast Journalism and Marketing from San Diego State University.

She lives in Orange County, CA, with her husband and children.

In her free time, she loves to cook (20 year veteran of family meals), entertain friends at home, snow ski, and relax on the beach.