September is turning into an incredible all sensory feast of festivals. MusicfestNW kicks off tonight, then TBA opens its doors tomorrow. Before it’s done, the new (sold out) XOXO tech fest launches at YU on Sept 13. We’ll get a couple days rest, but then a deliciously ambitious new major food festival, actually called Feast and celebrating the unmatched vibrancy of the Oregon food and drink community, will whip the city into a frothy foodie frenzy (hopefully refueling all those calories we’ve burned running from venue to venue).

Opening Feast is the celebrated food writer and cooking evangelist Mark Bittman in a talk co-sponsored by Literary Arts on September 20. Bittman exists in the ranks of the leading thinkers and visionaries—along with the likes of Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Wendell Berry—who are redefining our increasingly complex relationship to food. His cookbooks How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian guide us in the kitchen, while his writing in the New York Times and books like Food Matters guide us in the very basics of what to eat and how our choices will affect the fate of our world.

You can read an interview with Bittman in this month’s Editor’s Note, as well as find the official guide to Feast in the September issue of PoMo currently on newsstands (it also has our epic Food Lover’s Guide to further tickle your taste buds).

This contest is now close.

For a small taste, check out his TED talk: