On Food and Writing

Conversations On Creative Practice Series Finale With Champe Speidel
and Lisa Harrison Speidel, On Food and Writing: Tomorrow, Wednesday May 27th From 6pm-8pm

Join us for our final Conversation on Creative Practice tomorrow, Wednesday May 27th from 6pm-8pm with Champe Speidel and Lisa Harrison Speidel, the owners of Persimmon in Bristol; Champe, is a well-known Rhode Island chef, and Lisa is a Senior Editor at Rhode Island Monthly.

Champe and Lisa's restaurant, Persimmon is a modern restaurant serving fresh American cuisine in harmony with the seasons. Located in historic Bristol, Rhode Island, Persimmon's thirty-eight seat bistro opened in the spring of 2005, garnering regional and national praise.

Born in Ohio, Champe grew up surrounded by gardens and exceptional food. At sixteen he worked for a local butcher and began to marry his culinary interests with education. After graduating from Johnson and Wales Culinary Program, Champe cooked in many local kitchens before opening Persimmon. Champe combines his unyielding enthusiasm for the craft with a fierce commitment to sourcing the very best ingredients and products. Persimmon is a place that merges flavor, technique and passion, for a creative dining experience that is truly one of a kind.

Unlike her husband, Lisa Speidel, a native Rhode Islander, never aspired to culinary greatness--though when she met Champe in 2002, she had a feeling that her knowledge of food and involvement in the restaurant industry would soon be expanding. A passionate writer, she attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and earned her Master's degree in English from The University of Rhode Island. Lisa has been an editor at Rhode Island Monthly, a monthly award-winning regional lifestyle magazine, for the past ten years and most currently as the Senior Editor. She has served on the Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theater Board of Directors from 2004-06, and currently serves on the board of directors for Drop in & Decorate: Cookies For Donation.

Come talk about your love for food and writing.

This conversation with Champe and Lisa is the finale in New Urban Arts' second series of public Conversations on Creative Practice held Wednesday from 6:00-8:00pm located at New Urban Arts, 743 Westminster Street in Providence. This event is Free and Open to the Public.

New Urban Arts Series: Conversations on Creative Practice is made possible through generous support of The Rhode Island Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. This event is organized by New Urban Arts Mentoring Fellows, Andrew Oesch and Peter Hocking. For more information, visit www.newurbanarts.org.