Erin Gleeson is the New York Times bestselling cookbook author and artist behind the lifestyle brand The Forest Feast. She’s written 5 cookbooks plus an art book called The Watercolor Feast. The books have been translated into 10 languages and are now sold worldwide!
After working in New York as a food photographer, Erin left the city for a cabin in the woods in California which inspired her to create The Forest Feast blog that started it all. Erin’s art has a unique, colorful aesthetic blending watercolors, photography and bold patterns. Her art is on display in the books and on the clothing and home products she creates for The Forest Feast Shop.
After 3 kids, 6 books and 10+ years in the woods, in 2024 Erin’s family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where they now live near a lake and grow vegetables in their front yard.
Through it all, The Forest Feast’s mission remains the same: to inspire people to gather and to feel creative through art and food.
My Story
I grew up in the middle of an apple orchard in rural Sonoma County, CA, in the 1980s. My family was vegetarian and we cooked often with vegetables from our garden. I spent a lot of time outdoors and remember so well the sweet smell of the apple blossoms in spring, picking warm blackberries off the vine in August, and how soft the dirt felt in the orchard after it had been tilled. It's that type of connection to a place, and to the land, that has been a creative and grounding source of inspiration to me now, so many years later.
After majoring in art in college in Santa Barbara, I moved to New York to "be a photographer". After assisting other photographers and interning at magazines, I went back to school for my MFA in photography at SVA. I then shot for cookbooks, magazines, top chefs and restaurants, The New York Times Dining section, and The James Beard Foundation and I taught photography to college students at The Fashion Institute of Technology for 4 years.
My husband Jonathan is from New York City and we met when I was living in Manhattan during grad school. We later moved to California for his work and unexpectedly found an ad for a lovely little cabin in the woods. Living there took my work in a direction I would have never imagined! I started my Forest Feast blog as a new personal project. Inspired by local, seasonal ingredients in our weekly CSA box, I made “photographic recipe illustrations” and shared them online via Tumblr. The blog gained traction and I soon got a book deal. In 2014, The Forest Feast cookbook was released and became a New York Times bestseller, paving the way for me to write a series.
Quick book timeline —>
2014: My first cookbook, The Forest Feast, was published by Abrams and it was a dream project come true!
2016: The Forest Feast for Kids, a book for kids to cook from. It’s an adaptation; there are 20 recipes from my first book and 20 new ones.
2016: The Forest Feast Gatherings, an entertaining-focused book with menus for different occasions.
2019: The Forest Feast Mediterranean. Another dream come true! We spent 3 months traveling around Spain, Italy, France and Portugal to shoot and develop this book. And we had an infant and toddler in tow!
2022: The Forest Feast Road Trip, based on our family’s extended trip to visit farms and stay in cabins all over California.
2025: The Watercolor Feast, an art book for beginners about learning to paint fruits, vegetables and edible flowers, with recipes sprinkled throughout.
Current projects:
Weekly Substack Newsletter: Forest Feast Supper Club
Follow along on Instagram for daily updates @theforestfeast
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Click below for my Google Talk, a 45-min presentation I did in 2019 at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Using a slideshow, I tell the story of how I arrived at creating cookbooks:
For more info on me, please check out my press page.
From our neck of the woods to yours, welcome to The Forest Feast!