Susan Spungen

Susan Spungen is an American food writer, editor, and food stylist. Spungen was founding food editor and editorial director of food at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, publisher of Martha Stewart Living magazine, from 1991 to 2003. She later published the books Recipes: A Collection for the Modern Cook, What's a Hostess to Do? (2013), Open Kitchen (2020), and Veg Forward (2023), and worked as a culinary consultant for the films Julie & Julia and It's Complicated (both 2009), Eat Pray Love (2010), and Labor Day (2013).

Early life and family Spungen's parents were Franklin Spungen (1934–2010) and Deborah ( Alterman) Spungen (1937–2024). Spungen's father was a traveling salesman and was owner and chief executive of the Hamptons Paper Company in Water Mill, New York. A middle-class Jewish family, the Spungens lived in Huntingdon Valley, Lower Moreland Township, in the Philadelphia suburbs. During her childhood, Spungen remembers eating various Ashkenazi Jewish dishes her grandmother would make.

When they were older, Nancy moved to New York City and began a relationship with Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious while visiting England. Nancy's death by stabbing in the Chelsea Hotel in 1978, several months after the couple returned to New York City, was well publicized. She had been working as a pastry chef at Coco Pazzo at the time. She started working with Stewart on photo shoots, and became founding food editor and editorial director at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 1991. Spungen left the magazine in 2003, after 12 years as editor, and started freelancing.

Film consultant Film director Nora Ephron invited Spungen to act as a culinary consultant for her film Julie & Julia (2009), starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in the title roles of Julia Child and Julie Powell, respectively. Jason Reitman's script specified that the scene should be the "greatest pie-making scene in cinema history" (written in all caps); Spungen has stated that this was "pretty much what convinced me". In his review of Labor Day, The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane described the scene as "juicy masterwork". Workman published her 2013 book, What's a Hostess to Do?, which provides advice on entertaining guests.

In her cookbook Open Kitchen, published in 2020 by Avery Publishing, Spungen provides the term sprezzatura, meaning "studied nonchalance", for her philosophy for entertaining guests. The work was positively received by New York Times reviewer Melissa Clark, who wrote that "all of her food is modern, clever and, in our house, instantly devoured".

During the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021, Spungen started an online cooking newsletter named Susanality. She published Veg Forward, a vegetable-focused cookbook, in 2023.

Personal life Spungen married Steven Kasher, owner of a photography gallery in Chelsea, in a wedding at the Blue Hill at Stone Barns in 2007.