Steven Raichlen is an award-winning author, journalist, cooking teacher, and TV host. His best-selling Barbecue Bible cookbook series has been translated into 12 languages and has sold more than 4 million copies. His long-running Barbecue University show on public television, followed in 2008 by the series Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen (also on public television) virtually reinvented America’s relationship with barbecue.

Raichlen’s own adventures with barbecue began with The Barbecue Bible (Workman, 1998), an IACP/ Julia Child Award-winning encyclopedic study of global grilling chronicling his 4-year, 200,000-mile odyssey on the world’s barbecue trail. This ground-breaking book was so successful that a 10th anniversary edition (revised, updated, and with color photographs) was released in May, 2008, by Workman Publishing.

In 2000, Workman published How to Grill, the world’s first step-by-step guide to live fire cooking, with more than 1000 step-by-step color photographs, hailed by the New York Times as "astute, approachable, and eminently appealing.” How to Grill won an IACP Award, as well as a Jacob’s Creek Silver Ladle award in Australia. Raichlen followed it with BBQ USA (2003), a 780-page, 650-photograph, 425-recipe love song to regional American barbecue. He subsequently paid special homage to barbecued ribs in Raichlen on Ribs (2006).

Raichlen has also written Barbecue Bible Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades; Beer Can Chicken; the perennially popular Miami Spice (Workman Publishing), the James Beard Award-winning Healthy Latin Cooking (Rodale), and the Big Flavor Cookbook (Black Dog & Levanthal).

His next book, Planet Barbecue, is scheduled for publication in 2009. It will feature recipes and cultural vignettes from 40 countries collected during Raichlen’s recent sojourns on the world’s barbecue trail.

Raichlen is also a popular television personality. Barbecue University with Steven Raichlen, a 52-episode series, debuted on public television in 2003. His newest live-fire cooking series, The Primal Grill with Steven Raichlen, first aired in spring, 2008; it was filmed on location at the Tubac Golf Resort in Tubac, Arizona, in partnership with Maryland Public Television.

In 2000, Raichlen launched “Barbecue University,” a comprehensive 3-day workshop for barbecue and grilling enthusiasts that the Food Network dubbed “the best BBQ experience in America.” The “campus” is currently in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains at the luxurious Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In 2003, the man named “Cooking Teacher of the Year” by Bon Appetit magazine, defeated Iron Chef Roksbura Michiba in a barbecue battle on Japanese television.

In 1975, Raichlen received a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study comparative literature. He holds a degree in French literature from Reed College and trained at the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris. Raichlen lives with his wife, Barbara, in Coconut Grove, Florida, and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.