Quick Facts
Biography
James Howard Mitcham (1917 in Winona, Mississippi – August 22, 1996 in Hyannis, Massachusetts) was an American artist, poet, and cook best known for his books on Louisiana's Creole and Cajun cuisines and that of New England, with an emphasis on seafood.
Deaf from spinal meningitis as a teenager, Mitcham attended Louisiana State University and moved to Greenwich Village where he owned an art gallery. He acquired a reputation as a bohemian, raconteur, and "Renaissance man", spending much of his life in Provincetown, Massachusetts and New Orleans. He contributed a column to the Provincetown Advocate, since absorbed by the Banner.
Many of his books combined personal memoir and recipes with his own woodcuts and drawings. Anthony Bourdain has described Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook as "a witty, informative ode to local seafood, sprinkled with anecdotes".
He was the model for the "stone-deaf man" in Marguerite Young Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
Books
- Fishing on the Gulf Coast, 1959
- Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, 1976, ISBN 0-940160-33-1
- Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz: A New Orleans Seafood Cookbook, 1978, ISBN 0-201-05585-6
- Maya o Maya!: Rambunctious fables of Yucatán, 1981
- Four tales from Byzantium, 1984
- Clams, Mussels, Oysters, Scallops, and Snails: A Cookbook and a Memoir, 1990 ISBN 0-940160-46-3