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Award Winning Author Launches International Book Tour in Belize

Award winning author Joan Fry came to Belize as a 20 year old American girl in the early 1960's to live in a Kekchi Maya village in Punta Gorda. Nearly 40 years later, she has written about her experiences in the book How to Cook a Tapir - A Memoir of Belize, an extraordinary story of how she learned so much from the Maya about life and love - but even more importantly, she learned how to cook.

Newlywed to the first anthropologist to study the Kekchi Maya in Belize, her honeymoon involved sharing a boat with livestock from Belize City to Punta Gorda and arriving to discover that her new home was a thatched hut, with a dirt floor and the only available toilet being 'bush'. Unable to speak the language and feeling ridiculous at times for not being able to accomplish the simplest tasks, such as carrying water from the river or making corn tortillas, Joan Fry struggled with trying to create a life for herself, find acceptance by the Maya people with whom she lived and learning to cope with an increasingly unsatisfying marriage.

How to Cook a Tapir is a book of sensory experience. The author ensures that you share the sights, smells and sounds of her Belizean adventure - especially through food. Every chapter, set against the exotic background of village life in the rainforest, gives the reader the opportunity to accompany Joan as she develops lifelong friendships with her Maya neighbours, teaching their children, nursing their wounds, sharing their losses and dancing all night with them during celebrations. Every chapter ends with a recipe, some of her earlier attempts being both hilarious and pathetic, but as she learns they become a true representation of authentic Maya cooking.

Joan Fry will be visiting Belize on a national book tour prior to her tour of the United States, offering people a chance to meet the author, attend readings and even taste some of the recipes. One special event, which will be held in San Pedro, will raise funds for the Maya Educational Foundation, a non profit organisation which runs a scholarship programme for Belizean Maya secondary school students in financial need.

How to Cook a Tapir - A Memoir of Belize book tour is as follows:

Belmopan
14 April 2009
Belize Bird Rescue

Welcome party and reception. Meet the author, readings and book signing. By invitation only. (for more information call Belize Bird Rescue on 610 0400)

San Pedro
19 April 2009
Hummingbird Cafe and Paiges Bookshop

How to Cook a Tapir Culinary Experience - Fundraising dinner for the Maya Educational Foundation, Belize Scholarship Program. Meet the author, readings and book signing. (to purchase tickets call Conch Creative on 624 8251)

Belize City
22 April 2009, 10:00am
Museum of Belize

Meet the author, readings and book signing. (For more information contact Lita Krohn: on 601 6919 or The Museum of Belize on 223 4524

Press information

For more information on Joan Fry:
Web: http://joanfry.com/index.htm" http://joanfry.com/index.htm

For more information on the Maya Educational Foundation, Belize Scholarship Program:
Web: http://www.mayaedufound.org/In-Belize.php" http://www.mayaedufound.org/In-Belize.php


Joan Fry will be available for interviews and photographs. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Colette Kase at Conch Creative
Tel: 501 226 4366
Email: [email protected]

Huzzah, Joan!

--Lan Sluder

Tickets for the dinner (I've tasted the menu and it is fantastic) can be bought at Paiges Bookshop.

Just a little reminder to everyone about this event, which is a fundraiser for the Maya Educational Foundation, to provide secondary school scholarships for Maya children in Belize.