About Bill Buford
William Holmes Buford (born 6 October 1954) is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism." == Early years == Buford was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and raised in Southern California, attending the University of California, Berkeley, from 1973 to 1977. He then received a Marshall Scholarship to read English at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1979. He remained in England for most of the 1980s. == Work == === As an author === Among the Thugs (1990) is presented as an insider's account of the world of (primarily) English football hooliganism. Heat (2006) is Buford's account of working for free in the kitchen of Babbo, a New York City restaurant owned by chef Mario Batali. Buford's premise is that he considered himself a capable home cook and wondered whether he had the skills to work in a busy restaurant kitchen.
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