About this item
Beth M. Howard knows about pie. She made pies at Californiarsquos Malibu Kitchen for celebrities including Barbra Streisand lemon meringue, Dick Van Dyke strawberry rhubarb, and Steven Spielberg coconut cream before moving back home to rural Iowa. She now lives in the famous American Gothic House the backdrop for Grant Woodrsquos famous painting and runs the hugely popular Pitchfork Pie Stand.With full-color photos throughout, Ms. American Pie features of Bethrsquos coveted pie recipes and some of her own true tales to accompany them. With chapters like Pies to Heal, Pies to Seduce, and Pies to Win the Iowa State Fair, Beth will divulge her secret for making a killer crust without refrigerating the dough and will show you how to break every rule yoursquove ever learned about making delicious, homemade pie.
About the Author
Beth M. Howard, author of "Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie" and "Ms. American Pie: Buttery Good Pie Recipes and Bold Tales from the American Gothic House," has been a journalist for more than 25 years specializing in personality profiles, adventure travel, and outdoor sports. She has written for Shape, Elle, Travel & Leisure, Fitness, and many other magazines. Her assignments have taken her sky diving, dog sledding in Alaska, scuba diving with sharks, and competing in the Eco-Challenge, a ten-day multi-sport race through Utah's wilderness, which she and her team successfully finished.She has worked as a senior editor for Sports Traveler and a contributing editor for Sports Illustrated Women. She has been a producer for MSN.com's Women's Channel and for MSNBC.com's 2002 Winter Olympics official Web site. For six years she freelanced for Microsoft Corporation as the content editor for Bill Gates' annual CEO Summit.
Before becoming a journalist, Howard established herself as a successful public relations executive. She began as a PR manager for a Hyatt Hotels mega-resort in Hawaii, which led to an account executive position at Rogers & Cowan in Los Angeles, where she launched the original hit TV series Beverly Hills, 90210. Other high-profile PR projects have included Diedrich Coffee, Hilton Hotels, and FUEL TV (a unit of Fox) , establishing an internal publicity department for the action-sports cable network.
At the age of 25, she started a gourmet coffee business in Nairobi, Kenya, living the life of a modern-day Karen Blixen. She marketed her award-winning coffee in Kenya and the U.S. But after convincing The New York Times to run a story on her product, she knew media was her true calling.
She received a Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, graduating in three years with an emphasis on communications and environmental studies. She has worked and lived throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. She continues to practice speaking French, Spanish, and German, though, admittedly, she gave up on Japanese and has forgotten most of her Swahili.
From 2010 to 2014, Beth lived in Eldon, Iowa, in the famous American Gothic House, where she wrote her memoir, "Making Piece" (published April 2012) and her cookbook, "Ms. American Pie" (published April 2014) and ran the Pitchfork Pie Stand. She is currently writing a memoir about living in the famous Iowa tourist attraction. She continues to write for magazines and is developing a TV/web series about pie. Her story and her blog, "The World Needs More Pie," has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, New York Times, Readers Digest, Midwest Living, Real Simple, Country Living, CBS This Morning, NPR, and many other national media outlets.
