Karla Tatiana Vasquez, food writer, recipe developer, and food stylist
In conversation with Krystal C. Mack, food designer and artist
This event is part of the Fall 2024 Humanities Forum.

In 2015, first-generation Salvadoran American, Karla T. Vasquez, began an online project to document recipes like the ones her mother made during her childhood. Over time, the project grew to include not only recipes, but also stories from the women who created them, offering a portrait of life for Salvadoran women both before the civil war and after their arrival in the United States. Vasquez will discuss The SalviSoul Cookbookand her efforts to preserve the food and stories of Salvadoran moms, aunts, grandmothers, and friends.

Karla T. Vasquez is a food writer, recipe developer, and food stylist based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, Eater LA, and KCET (PBS SoCal), among others. Her recipe development work can be seen in Food & Wine, Serious Eats, BuzzFeed Tasty, and Tastemade. She is also a food justice advocate and an active member in her community to increase healthy food accessibility in low-income communities, previously working with Hunger Action Los Angeles and Los Angeles Food Policy Council. She founded SalviSoul in an effort to preserve her family’s recipes, and since then it has expanded to focus on cultural memory and intergenerational healing for the Salvadoran diaspora.

Krystal C. Mack is a self-taught food designer and artist using her social practice to highlight food and nature’s role in collective healing, empowerment, and decolonization. Her work has been highlighted by the New York Times, NPR, Food & Wine, and MOLD Magazine. She has been named a “Woman to Watch” by the Baltimore Sun and featured on the Cherry Bombe 100 Women in Food list by Cherry Bombe Magazine as a food industry “Change Agent.” In 2023, she was awarded the United States Artist Fellowship in Architecture & Design, becoming the first artist in the history of the USA Fellowship to be honored for working with food.

Admission is free.

This event is co-sponsored by the Latinx and Hispanic Faculty Association, the Public Humanities Program, and UMBC Dining Services.

Photograph: Ren Fuller