Local Chef and Writer, Dorette Snover, Featured in Novel Contest

CHAPEL HILL, NC – C’est si Bon! is pleased to announce that Dorette Snover’s novel, City of Ladies, is one of the entries in Gather.com’s First Chapters Writing Competition. Snover is Chef Owner of C’est si Bon! Cooking School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition is a first-time author’s gateway to publication. One novelist will win a publishing contract with Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, a $5,000 cash prize and promotion by Borders. By midnight March 15, well over 2,500 entries had been submitted. All entries have a chance to be voted on by the Gather Community and the Gather Editorial staff. Three rounds of voting ensue, with the first round of voting continuing through March 30.

City of Ladies, http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976933700, maps the powerful, tender and brutal journey of a sixteenth century French talmelier (bread apprentice), Eleone. One reader comments, “I felt deliciously woven into the spell of Epi and Antoine. The characters have a beauty that is refreshing and natural. Even the minor character, Paillard, is robust and sensual in his blindness and kindness to Epi. I am drawn to the mysterious journey that is eluded to, ‘That is how, Eleone. How we will escape St. Levain.’ There is more to this little visit to the brothel. Bravo! Give me more!”

Snover says her idea for the novel began some years ago in France, when she headed off to Gascony after attending a culinary conference in Paris. “There I was haunted by the stone bridge over the River Gelise at La Belle Gascon in the tiny isolated village of Poudenas,” says Snover. “I returned that summer to work side by side with celebrated Chef Marie-Claude Gracias. My estage with Marie-Claude led me to write City of Ladies.”

Ten years later, Snover returned to Poudenas for a special stay with her husband, a small group of friends and her oldest son. Now on the chef path himself (in Vail, Colorado), he enjoyed his tenth birthday dinner – foie gras and a divine civet – right there in Poudenas.

Snover’s other stories have appeared in the 2005 anthology, Original Sin: The Seven Deadlies Come Home to Roost. She contributed her story, “Styling,” to the collection of fiction. Depths of gluttony are explored in her story as we travel with a food stylist and a French film director as they shop at Dean and Deluca in New York City.

Chef Snover contributed “Aboyer: The Little Announcer,” a story about a butter maker in Paris, for Women Behaving Badly, Feisty Flash Fiction Stories, which was released in January 2005. The story’s poignant hinting at loss and the inability to reclaim the dead is as wrenching as it is beautiful.

One of Snover’s essays, “In the Kitchen,” was published in an anthology of North Carolina women, The Secret to their Success.

Visit C’est si Bon’s new blog at http://cestsibon.typepad.com/planting_cabbages/. To view C’est si Bon’s spring roster of culinary adventures, visit www.cestsibon.net. To schedule a literary cooking event or to arrange for a personalized copy of any of her writings, contact Chef Dorette Snover at (919) 942-6550 or dorette@cestsibon.net.

MEDIA CONTACT: Dorette Snover, 919.942.6550, dorette@cestsibon.net, www.cestsibon.net