PRESS

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Media Watch by Robin Maher Jenkins

Alimentum – The Literature of food is a pocket-sized twice-annual literary journal with Paulette Licitra at the helm and Peter Selgin as editor. The pieces provide wonderfully thought-provoking snacking, best taken a nibble at a time to prolong the pleasure.
                                                                       

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Pretty Tasty Pages by Rachel Wharton

This tiny tome is for those who love the literary side of the table. In between quirky drawings and famous quips – “Red meat is not bad for you,” says comedian Tommy Smothers, ”now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!” – are fiction, memoirs and other food-related tales.

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WEEKEND AMERICA

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Literary MagNet

Ever since Proust chomped down on his Madeleine, food has been a common go-to for writers seeking some high-caloric inspiration, but publisher Paulette Licitra’s biannual Alimentum might be the first journal dedicated exclusively to “the literature of food.”

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Just Hungry
by Makiko Itoh

Imagine my joy to discover there’s a journal dedicated to “The Literature of Food.”….Alimentum is not your run of the mill food magazine. It has the size and form of a trade paperback, with attractive cover and spine so that you can keep the issues on your bookshelf to read over and over again. The articles are like a feast of plenty for someone like me who loves great food writing. There are non-fiction pieces, short stories and poems. Some of the pieces made me laugh out loud, some made me think, and some brought a lump to my throat. They reminded me, as re-reading M.F.K. Fisher does, that food is about nourishment and pain and sex and love and memories and adventures and a whole lot else. As Paulette Licitra says in the Publisher’s Preface to the first issue:
Because I love literature and I love food, when I read about food I want more than a recipe list, more then a restaurant critique, more than a description of exotic cuisines in faraway places. I know that food has a personal presence in our lives – it’s not just a matter of taste and culture. Food also simmers in our hearts – like music, nature, and dreams.

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by Rachel Seow

What sets the biannual apart from other printed foodie periodicals is its content. The reader won’t find recipes but fiction, poetry, and essays by an eclectic assortment of writers. And while the focus is assuredly food-centric, what’s served between the pages isn’t just what’s on your plate.

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NY BOOK SHOW CELEBRATES INDIES
The New York Bookbinders Guild, founded in 1926, is the oldest and largest book production association in the country. This year in its twenty-second annual New York Book Show, it expanded its reach to invite small and independent presses to submit entries.
Here are the small indie presses winning awards in this year’s show:
Alimentum: First place in General Trade, Quality Paperback Series: Alimentum: The Literature of Food. A twice-yearly subscription journal and paperback series, self-described as “the first-ever literary review devoted to the subject of food: original fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.”

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Alimentum
Issue 5
Winter 2008
Reviewed by Camilla S. Medders

Alimentum publishes “the literature of food.” When I first opened this magazine, I thought I knew what that meant. Poems about sandwiches, maybe, sentimental stories about grandma’s cherry pie. I thought that, at best, this magazine would succeed in making me hungry. Boy was I wrong. Almost from the first page, reading this magazine was an educational experience. I learned all kinds of interesting things about food, but more importantly, I learned something about the power of good writing.  
Literature about food has the somewhat clichéd task of making the ordinary extraordinary, and in order to do this well, the writing itself must be extraordinary. Alimentum certainly lives up to this task, infusing the subject of food with all levels of meaning. In Tzivia Gover’s recipe poem, “Lunch,” a mother only half-ironically compares her picky child to a Zen master, explaining that “her mouth is a portal of refusal; her belly a tidy receptacle of light and emptiness.” Stephen Gibson’s “Ghazal at the Hotel Ai Mori d’Oriente” contrasts a grisly scene from the Iraq war with a vacation breakfast: “I was looking at the mini-croissants and the provolone half-moon cheese slices / And cut strawberries and thinking it looked like art, when the soldier killed him.”
Of the short stories, my favorite is “Milk,” by Lisa Allen, which uses a post-funeral meal to illustrate the dynamics of a wounded family. I also enjoyed Toshiya Kamei’s translation of “Carrots,” by Ryuischiro Utsumi, a sweet story about an old woman who is rescued from loneliness by a root vegetable.
Overall, though, I enjoyed the essays the most. “Hoosh” by Jason Anthony is a long, entrancing discussion of food, or lack of it, in the Antarctic. In “Pain Americain,” Bonnie Lee Black describes her job teaching African women to cook nutrient-rich bread.
The pieces I’ve mentioned here are only a taste of the feast inside the pages of Alimentum. When I put down this magazine, I didn’t feel hungry at all. I was completely satisfied.

Alimentum
Issue 2
Summer 2006
Reviewed by Sima Rabinowitz
Don't read Alimentum when you're hungry! On the second thought, read it when you're very hungry—it will satisfy your appetite for good writing, as well as for good food (not to mention spirits). I was reading Sophie Helen Menin's personal essay, "First Growth—An Essay on Love and Wine" on the bus and nearly leaped off, several blocks before my stop, when we passed a wine shop. Her essay about the wines her husband collects, and which they both savor, had me nearly desperate for a bottle of Barolo. Who knew it was possible to write such mouth watering fiction, or scrumptious poetry, or savory essays as the many appetizing works here by Michele Battiste, Patsy Anne Bickerstaff, and Jehanne Dubrow. Alimentum is more than luscious descriptions of great meals and the emotions they inspire, more than a whiff of fine coffee. There are mouthfuls of grief, platefuls of philosophical musing, abundant soul searching, a smattering of family history, and even a culinary folktale. In some of these stories, poems, and essays, food itself is the main course, while in others, food is more like the trays of hors d'oeuvres at a busy and engaging event—you're aware of them, but the characters you're meeting are more important than what they're popping in their mouths. One of these characters is novelist Joanne Harris, interviewed in this issue. Food appears in so much of her work, she says, because "if you are writing about people, and that's really what I do write about, then a number of universals will come out of that and one of them is eating because, you know, everybody eats." I liked everything in this issue, from Elisa Albo's wholesome poem to Sandy McIntosh's biting "Escape from the Fat Farm." If you are, indeed, hungry while you're reading this issue, wait until you've finished before digging into Lynn Levin's "How to Eat A Pet: A Gastronomic Adventure in the Andes."