Fuchsia Dunlop is a cook, cookbook author, and food writer who specializes in Chinese cooking. She has studied at Sichuan University in the Sichuanese capital of Chengdu and speaks, reads, and writes Chinese.

Fuchsia is the author of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. She also wrote Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook and Land of Plenty (in the UK, the book is called Sichuan Cookery).

Fuchsia grew up in Oxford, England, and studied at Magdalene College at Cambridge University. Several years after her year in China, she went on to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

She explains that she first became interested in all things Chinese when she was working at a “sub-editing job at the BBC,” which led her to take evening classes in Mandarin. She then applied for and won a British Council scholarship which took her to Chengdu.

Fuchsia writes for publications such as The Financial Times, The New Yorker, Gourmet and Saveur. She is a regular guest on radio and television, and has appeared on shows including Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word, NPR’s All Things Considered and The Food Programme on BBC Radio 4.

She was named Food Journalist of the Year by the British Guild of Food Writers in 2006, and has been shortlisted for four James Beard Awards. Sichuan Cookery won the Jeremy Round Award for best first book; Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper won both the Jane Grigson Award in the United States, and the Kate Whiteman Award for Food and Travel in the United Kingdom.

She is a consultant to the Barshu Sichuanese restaurant in London, and has also consulted and taught Chinese cooking for Williams Sonoma, Sharwoods, and Marks and Spencer. Fuchsia has spoken and cooked at conferences and events in China, Barcelona, California, New York, Sydney and Singapore, and as part of the Transart festival in Bolzano, Italy.

She lives in London and her website is http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/