Pamela Sheldon Johns: Biography and Background

Pamela Sheldon Johns is the author of seventeen cookbooks (see below) specializing in Italian traditional and regional ingredients. Her career, for more than twenty years, has included teaching, food photography/food styling, cooking school administration, food writing, innkeeping, and agriculture. She lives at Poggio Etrusco, her organic farm and Bed & Breakfast in southern Tuscany, and produces an extra-virgin olive oil called "Pace da Poggio Etrusco."

After earning a master's degree in Education/Psychology/Administration, Pamela taught cooking and food services to students with disabilities in southern California for ten years, then taught in the Communicative Disorders Dept at California State University, Long Beach. She took a leave of absence in 1986 to pursue a love for cooking which began by working with Chef Joachim Splichal and later, a management position with Ma Cuisine Cooking School (the cooking school of Ma Maison restaurant, Los Angeles).

In 1992, Johns and her husband, the artist Courtney Johns, moved to Santa Barbara, where she started a cooking school at Jordano's Marketplace. At this same time, she also began working as the representative of an Italian culinary program, and her first cookbook, Healthy Gourmet, a James Beard nominee, was published. When Jordano's Marketplace moved in 1999, the cooking school was closed. This created the opportunity to further develop the culinary workshops in Italy and devote more time to food writing.

A regular visitor to Italy since 1983, in 1992 she started Italian Food Artisans LLC, bringing food lovers for wine and food workshops in various regions: Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Campania, Sicily, Veneto, Abruzzo, Apulia, and Piedmont.

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