Lolis Eric Elie is an award-winning newspaperman and accomplished author. Since 1995, he has chronicled the heartbeat of New Orleans' neighborhoods for New Orleans' major daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune. A recognized expert on New Orleans food and culture, Lolis is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country, a book about the culture of barbecue. He produced a television documentary based on that book and has several other culinary documentaries in development. He is currently writing Of Bondage & Memory, a book on the enduring legacy of the slave trade on two continents. He is editor of Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing for University of North Carolina Press and is a contributing writer for Oxford America, Gourmet, and other national publications. As a producer for the Smithsonian Institute's Jazz Oral History Project, Lolis conducted interviews with many of New Orleans' elder jazz musicians. Lolis is a current Soros Katrina Media Fellow awarded by the Open Society Institute and is currently a contributing writer on the HBO television series Tremé, directed by David Simon. He has master's degrees from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York and a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. He and his father live in the Tremé and have become key figures in the area's cultural renaissance.