Make It Messy

Marcus Samuelsson is the acclaimed chef behind many restaurants worldwide. He has won multiple James Beard Foundation awards for his work as a chef and as host of No Passport Required, his public television series with Vox/Eater. Samuelsson was crowned champion of Top Chef Masters and Chopped All Stars and was the guest chef for President Obama’s first state dinner. A committed philanthropist, Samuelsson is co-chair of Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP), which focuses on underserved youth. Author of several cookbooks in addition to the NewYork Times bestselling memoir Yes, Chef, Samuelsson also co-produces the annual Harlem EatUp! festival, which celebrates the food, art, and culture of Harlem. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Samuelsson converted his restaurants Red Rooster Harlem, Marcus B&P in Newark, and Red Rooster Overtown in Miami into community kitchens in partnership with World Central Kitchen, serving well over 150,000 meals to those in need. He lives in New York City with his family.

Veronica Chambers is a prolific author, best known for her critically acclaimed memoir Mama’s Girl. She coauthored the award-winning memoir Yes, Chef with chef Marcus Samuelsson, as well as Samuelsson’s young-adult memoir Make It Messy, and has collaborated on four New York Times bestsellers, most recently 32 Yolks, which she cowrote with chef Eric Ripert. She has been a senior editor at the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and Glamour. Born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, she writes often about her Afro-Latina heritage. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish, but she is truly fluent in Spanglish. She is currently a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University. Her upcoming novel is The Go-Between.