Kayla Stewart is a James Beard Award-winning food and travel journalist, cookbook author, and editor of Eater Houston. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, and others.

Kayla served as a Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia and was awarded the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship. Her piece, “The Sweetest Harvest,” won the 2023 James Beard Foundation Profile Award, and her story, “Teach a Man to Fish,” will be anthologized in the 2023 edition of Best American Food Writing. She is the co-author, with Emily Meggett, of the James Beard-nominated, New York Times bestselling cookbook, “Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island,” and is working on a cookbook with chef Christopher Williams about Black cuisine in Texas for Ten Speed Press.

Kayla is part of the adjunct faculty at New York University, where she teaches a course on food writing. She received her B.A. in Journalism from the University of Houston, and holds a joint master’s degree in International Relations and Journalism from New York University. When she’s not on the road, she splits her time between Houston and New York City.

Kayla is represented by Cindy Uh at the Creative Artists Agency.