Heather Richie


Heather Richie is an American writer and editor specializing in land traditions, foodways, outdoor sports, and environmental storytelling. Her work spans diverse domains, including culinary culture, rural land use, and gonzo journalism across the American—and what she calls “unbordered”—South.

Early life and education

Heather Richie was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She attended the College of Charleston undergraduate program where she worked in the Writing Lab, and Sewanee: The University of the South, where her MFA thesis was accepted for publication by LSU Press. Prior to attending graduate school, she did stints in odd jobs with overlapping interests in education, food systems, and entrepreneurship, such as at small farms and bakeries, spending "10 years joining Teach for America, starting a real estate brokerage, making signs, delivering flowers and, finally, delivering the mail."
She later attended Duke University and undertook a PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her dissertation explores the role of the media and the Catholic Church in influencing 19th–21st century attitudes towards seafood consumption in Ireland.
In 2025, she began legal studies at the Law Society of Ireland focusing on fisheries and food legislation.

Career

Richie is a writer whose special interest is the land traditions, particularly the foodways and sporting, of the modern American and unbordered souths. Her bylines include Southern Living, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Journal, Garden & Gun, Oxford American, Gastronomica, and Nieman Storyboard.
She has covered topics such as culinary traditions, regional food history, field sports, and natural land stewardship. Examples of her work include:
  • "A Cake of Truly Historic Proportions" – a culinary history piece about Martha Washington's Great Cake, for Garden & Gun.
  • Features for Land Magazine exploring land-use traditions, hunting leases, water features, and wildlife conservation in rural settings.
She was an editorial intern at Garden & Gun and Oxford American magazines, and Associate Editor at Fiction Southeast. She served as adjunct faculty at Toccoa Falls College and LBC Universidad. Richie has spoken at academic conferences including the 2016 Society for the Study of Southern Literature conference in Boston and the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium in 2018. She was a 2017 judge for the International Association of Culinary Professionals Food Writing Awards.
Richie has served as a Copywriter at Annapolis Performance Sailing as well as a Digital Producer to ????? & ???????? and Anthony Bourdain’s ????? ???????.
Richie is a licensed Maritime and Coastguard Agency mariner, where she began working on international yacht crews, completing training with the Royal Yachting Association and earning a Ship's Cook Certificate under the Maritime Labour Convention. She is qualified as a commercial fisherman in Ireland. In 2020, she founded a Lymington-based cookbook and specialty food store, delaying launch until 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the company opened an Irish branch office.
Richie is the founder of Autism Friendly Connemara, part of the Irish charity AsIAm Autism Friendly Towns programme.

Themes and style

Richie's writing often blends evocative narrative with reportage on rural life, natural resources, regional foodways, and community heritage. She was "raised in a relationship with the land and foodways of her native South, and both are prevalent themes in her writing."
Her work is characterized by:
  • A strong regional focus on the American South and its cultural traditions.
  • Exploration of land and outdoor lifestyle through evocative storytelling.
  • Investigative and advocacy-oriented reporting on sustainable land and fishing practices.

Recognition

In 2014, Richie was awarded a research grant from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a New New South Editorial Fellowship at Duke University, and the Rivendell Writer-in-Residency from the Sewanee School of Letters. That same year, she was featured in the Southern Foodways Alliance’s inaugural Spotlight series,
and was named a scholarship finalist for the Lee Bros. Cookbook Boot Camp.
Richie received the Carnegie-Whitney Grant from the American Library Association under the direction of Jennifer France of American College of the Building Arts to compile an "The Essential Wooden Boat Building Reading List" during which time Richie attended the wooden boat building school at Cape Fear Community College to produce an epistolary column for WoodenBoat, addressing a wooden boat directly.
In 2021, she received multiple scholarships including the Orvis 50/50 award to attend the Certified Fly Fishing Guide program at Colorado Mountain College.