In the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, the Literature department offers (and demands, really) a class once a week to hear esteemed and published writers speak. Novelists, spoken word, poets, professors, and even alumni read their pieces to some 50 undergrad students for an hour, and indulge in a Q&A afterward. Though there were days where, at 4pm, all I wanted to do was get home to my apartment after hours of lit analysis, and I tuned the speakers out, there is one in particular who changed my perspective. That reader was infamous food critic for the LA Weekly, Jonathan Gold.
