Articles

I’ve written hundreds of articles for national magazines, including The New York Times, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Salon.com, Vogue, Glamour, Self, Marie Claire, Mother Jones, Sunset, Afar, Elle, the Daily Beast, San Francisco Examiner Magazine, O: the Oprah Magazine, and many others. I’ve been a contributing editor at Health, Good Housekeeping, More, San Francisco Magazine and Craftsmanship Quarterly. Several of my articles are listed below. Unfortunately, everything I ever wrote for San Francisco Magazine has now been deleted from the internet. Lots of others were published without links. I’m working on updating this page!

Of any essay I’ve ever written, this one, “Why I Stopped Being a Vegetarian,” originally published in Salon.com in 2000, has been reprinted most, mainly in college readers.

My essay, “Food for the Heart,” (Eating Well, January/February 2007) won the Bert Greene Award for Essay Writing from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP.com).

Here are a few others.

Featured Articles:

Our Way of Saying Goodbye (Published 2010)

TWELVE years ago, after 18 months of marriage, my husband left me unexpectedly, and when I could finally rouse myself to do anything, I booked a flight to Italy. Every time I’d been there, I’d felt happier, more alive, and I hoped that by speaking another language I would become another person for a while, one whose heart was whole.

My Mother, the Adventurer

The most annoyed my mother has ever been with me was when I was traveling alone in Egypt and didn’t call home for a month. She wasn’t exactly happy when I went to Iraq just before the Persian Gulf War, either, and interviewed Yasir Arafat in a house that was bombed to smithereens days later.

The Healing Power of “Bello” | San Patrignano drug rehabilitation in Italy | The Craftsmanship Initiative

By LAURA FRASER In the hills above Rimini, Italy, is a restaurant renowned across the region for its pizza. The terrace, surrounded by flowering trees, overlooks vineyards that roll down to the distant Adriatic Sea. In the center of the restaurant, called “SP.accio,” tattooed men knead, shape, and twirl dough in a gleaming, open kitchen.

A River Runs Through Us

Fly-fishing the waters of West Yellowstone is the stuff of dreams. Casting alongside your 85-year-old dad is the stuff of memories. By Laura Fraser Sunset Magazine, October 2013 I never understood my father’s love of fly- fishing.

The Antidote To Fast Fashion? System dressing | The Craftsmanship Initiative

Jill Giordano makes women’s clothing in what might be called sustainable designs: coats, pants, and dresses made with fine fabrics in timeless styles, and in combinations that can be mixed and matched any number of ways. Welcome to the art of “system” dressing-with quality. The goal: Improve your look, save the planet, and save money.

The Shinola Polish | The Craftsmanship Initiative

By LAURA FRASER M y introduction to Shinola started at my hotel, the Westin Book Cadillac, a tall, circa 1924, Neo-Renaissance building downtown, in the center of a lot of recent turnaround development. I was in Detroit to report another story, but Shinola was hard to miss.

Can Pátzcuaro and Surrounding Colonial Crafts Towns Survive Modern Mexico? | The Craftsmanship Initiative

In the 1500s, a Spanish bishop turned a collection of pueblos around the Mexican town of Patzcuaro into a center for craftsmanship. The people here are still making and marketing their wares in much the same way they did hundreds of years ago. Now they have to overcome tourists’ fears about drug traffickers, real or not.

Why I stopped being a vegetarian

U ntil a few of months ago, I had been a vegetarian for 15 years. Like most people who call themselves vegetarians (somewhere between 4 and 10 percent of us, depending on the definition; only 1 percent of Americans are vegans, eating no animal products at all), I wasn’t strict about it.

Joy in Her Bones | Spirituality & Health

Mexico’s obsession with death-its manic skeleton figurines, its altars festooned with tequila, cigarettes, and skulls-always seemed strange and macabre to me. Then, a few years ago, I visited the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende and woke up on November 2, the Day of the Dead, to streets lined with marigolds, candles flickering in homes and stores, colorful cut-out papers fluttering everywhere, and families picnicking and playing guitars in the decorated cemetery.

My sister’s doctors saw her weight – but missed her cancer

y older sister, Jan, visited me in San Francisco last spring. “You look great,” I told her, noticing that her clothes were hanging loose; she’d been heavy most of her life. “I’ve lost 60 pounds,” she said, and I automatically congratulated her. “I wasn’t trying,” she replied.

More Articles:

The Shock of the Nuevo, Sunset, May 2015

Words With Exes, Human Parts, August, 2015

William Zinsser, The Man Who Taught a Nation to Write Well, Al Jazeera, May 14, 2015

If Rugs Could Talk, Re:Form, October, 2014

The Risotto Guru, Shebooks, December, 2013

Antibacterial Soap: Safe Suds or Snake Oil?, OnEarth, December, 2012

The Long Goodbye, Whole Living, October, 2012

The Repentent Executioner, San Francisco Magazine, July, 2012 (deleted from internet, stand by)

“The Rice Man Cometh”, Real Eats, August 18, 2011

“Is Your Shampoo Making You Fat?”, OnEarth, June 27, 2011

“Moving Day”, Responsibility Project, June 17, 2011