An autobiography told through food: North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green knows food. Long before the farm-to-table movement took hold in popular culture, the garden was a rite of summer for families everywhere. Jaki's family was no exception. As soon as the garden “came in,” they would spring into action—pick, snap, shuck, peel, rinse, freeze, stew, preserve. At a young age, Jaki learned the power of food, its poetry, its eloquence, its ability to heal, to express love, to comfort. In her essay “Singing Tables,” from The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food, Green tells her life story through food.

Poet Jaki Shelton Green loves to cook, to taste, and to celebrate food, in the same way she writes and celebrates language. She is the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina, the first African American and the third woman to be appointed to this post. Forbes Magazine has named Green to the "50 Over 50" list of the most influential women in the nation who are reshaping the face of entertainment and the arts. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointee, and the 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. She teaches documentary poetry at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, and was the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC–Chapel Hill. Additionally, she received the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021. In 2022, she was appointed as Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Her poetry collections include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Feeding the Light, and I Want to Undie You. On Juneteenth 2020, she released her first poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst. Her story “Singing Tables” waspublished in Eno Publishers’ The Carolina Table: North Carolina Writers on Food. She is also a contributor to Eno Publishers’ anthologies 27 Views of Hillsborough: A Southern Town in Prose and Poetry and The Elizabeth Keckley Reader, Volume Two.