Welcome! I’m Kathleen Flinn, a storyteller, cook and teacher, and mother to Maddy, awesome rescue dog.
I’m the author of three books (all with Viking/Penguin), with more on the way. One is fiction, one is non-fiction and one is a cookbook of sorts. I love teaching, arguably more than I like writing.
Since people come to this page expecting some kind of bio, here’s my official author-y one from my publisher. Have fun with it:
Kathleen Flinn is an award-winning author and journalist, best known for The New York Times best-selling memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Her acclaimed follow-up, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, was named a 2012 Book of the Year by the American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA).
Her third book, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, a multi-generational memoir of her quirky family’s culinary adventures in the Midwest was named a 2015 Notable Book by the Library of Michigan, and was a finalist in the IACP Cookbook Awards for literary writing, Goodreads Choice Awards and the Pacific Northwest Book Awards.
She serves on the board of directors for the International Association of Culinary Professionals and the board of trustees of The Culinary Trust, a national 5013c non-profit co-founded by Julia Child. She founded the popular food writing curriculum Hungry for Words in 2006 and has elements of the coursework at more than a dozen writer’s conferences, universities and culinary schools. She lives in Seattle with her husband, Mike, and their rescue dog, Maddy.
Whew. That makes me tired just reading it. I’d like to add that I also read Tarot cards (really), used to do stand-up comedy and once worked as a singing telegram messenger. My last day job was working for Microsoft in London. 
Fear of a day job is what keeps me writing. My mom took my official author photo, and I rather love that. We live most of the year in Seattle, but we also have a home on Anna Maria Island in Florida a few blocks from my mom’s house. We now rent it by the week. Tell me you subscribe to my site and we can cut you a deal. At right you’ll see a photo of my husband, Mike, since “Kathleen Flinn husband” is one of the most popular Google search terms that leads people to my site. I took this one of him after the annual Gasparilla Parade in Tampa.
About this site. In 2009, I set about a project to understand what keeps people from cooking at home, an experience that turned into my second book The Kitchen Counter Cooking School. I think of CookFearless.com as an extension of the book. I left that project wanting to help teach the world to cook, to foster a sense of confidence – no, more than that – the ability for people to once again be fearless in their kitchens. People always ask me where I find recipes, or where they can take cooking classes or what kind of knife to buy. So that’s what I’ve collected here. I’m feast and famine with the blog; when I’m on deadline, I sort of ignore it. When I’ve got more time, I post more often. That’s life, I guess.
So, be fearless in your kitchen – and in your life.
Bests,
Questions? Comments? Drop me an email
Oh, and here’s a photo of our rescue dog, Maddy, at the Florida house.
