Jennifer burns bright

Recent travel and food writing clips can be found here.

Preservation recipes can be found here.

Jennifer Burns Bright creates content to educate and inspire audiences to love the Pacific Northwest. Like many people who live on the Oregon Coast, she wears many hats. Her media business, Burns Brightly Communications, based in Astoria, specializes in sharing the joys of local food and travel in the West. She is seeking new clients in the seafood and travel industries who want to tell stories about their communities that help sell a product or destination. Drop a line at wellsuited at gmail for inquiries about editing projects or marketing and editorial copy/photographs.

She is a food educator.

Experienced in teaching culinary skills, including preserving fruit, canning fish, foraging seaweed, and fermenting vegetables, Bright regularly provides demos and hands-on classes to build an appreciation for our local producers and increase self-sufficiency. She focuses on sustainable seafood and using Northwest ingredients. From 2016 to 2020, Bright led over 70 Oregon Humanities Conversation Project community discussions (on local seafood traditions and the DIY movement) throughout Oregon. She also produces and hosts a quarterly radio program on Astoria’s KMUN, Coast Community Radio, called “A Fine Kettle of Fish,” which focuses on local seafood (currently on a COVID hiatus). She also occasionally reviews restaurants, cookbooks, products, and kitchen appliances, providing photographs as necessary.

She is an old guard influencer.

Once playfully labeled a “seafood influencer,” this is not wrong, but perhaps it’s more of an old guard-style influencer. Bright treats businesses she believes in as long-term relationships, not just a photo shoot or hashtag (though she can shoot and tag with the best of them). Her recommendations surface in bold and subtle ways, in print, on social media, and across her wide network behind the scenes. Her “Cooking Local Seafood 101” and “What’s Local? Catch of the Day” courses have been popular draws for tourists and locals alike at libraries, community organizations, and resort happy hours, and she has helped amplify voices in the local food world through producing various guest speaker series and panels for events like conferences and festivals.

She is a recipe developer/tester and a food photographer.

For industry clients and home cooks, Bright brainstorms, creates, and tests recipes to reflect the best in locally harvested goods. Recent projects have included bean variety testing, surimi crackers, Dungeness crab, and albacore tuna. Her recipes and thoughtful headnotes reflect an understanding of history, global cuisine, and pro tips, and her simple yet effective photographs show off dishes at their best.

She is travel writer and enhancement speaker for the travel industry.

Bright contributes regularly to AAA’s print magazines in the West, which collectively reach almost five million households each issue, and many other media outlets. She produces clean and compelling copy, and edits for clarity and oomph. She speaks on food history and food systems issues on land and on board cruises on the Columbia/Snake Rivers, Puget Sound, and (as of Summer 2021) SE Alaska. Her forthcoming book, 25 Culinary Adventures on Oregon’s North Coast, will appear in 2021.

She has a solid background in research, writing, teaching, and local food production.

Bright taught literature and food studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene for seven years, leaving academic life to write about seafood on the coast in 2014. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine and Master Food Preserver and Master Gardener certifications from OSU Extension.

In her free time, Bright enjoys hiking on the North Coast and Long Beach peninsula, shipwatching on the Columbia, gardening, fishing, hunting for mushrooms and shellfish, and creating exquisite jams from foraged and gleaned fruit. She serves on the board of Astoria’s North Coast Food Web.