Hi! I’m a writer. Lately, I’ve been writing restaurant reviews and snack recipes for The Observer – lucky me! I love writing my Substack on a wheneverly basis.
I’ve also been writing Observer advertorials, restaurant roundups for Hello!, features for Sainsbury’s Magazine and content for Luxury Gold.
Work I’m particularly proud of from the last few years includes: helping to establish the M&S “parent hood” hub, a global Quaker Oats project for Uncommon, with Misan Harriman, this piece for Vittles and this one.
Since the onset of AI and the demise of meaningful writing work, the line between my copywriting and journalism has blurred significantly. I can write, though – that’s the main thing. If you’re a brand, I can make you sound good. I have 15+ years of experience with UX copy, campaigns and tone of voice work – for banks, energy companies, estate agents, charities and restaurants.
Between 2019 and 2023, I worked at EPAM (formerly TH_NK) as a senior copywriter, across accounts like Vue, Knight Frank, Bacardi and Screwfix.
I started my career as a food and travel journalist for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Foodism, The Pool, Food52, Refinery29, Waitrose Magazine and Lucky Peach. You can find some of that work on this website, under the journalism tab. I won the prize for food writing at the YBFs and AITO’s Young Travel Writer of the Year award. I wrote a column for Eater London about £5 eats in 2017-2018 and a column about snacks for Grazia in 2019-2020.
My first book was a peachy, starchy cookbook dedicated to a food group historically given far too much grief: CARBS. It was published by Quadrille in 2018. Nigella called it ‘wonderful’, Rukmini Iyer called it her 'favourite cookbook’ and Meera Sodha described it as 'joyful, funny and intelligent'.
THE JOY OF SNACKS was published by Headline Home in September 2022. It’s a collection of essays, lists, recipes and nonsenses to take you from your morning coffee to your evening wine via crispy bits, dips, nachos, frozen pina coladas and cake donuts. It was one of The Guardian’s books of the year, and it was shortlisted at the Fortnum & Mason awards.
My work has appeared in other people’s wonderful books, too: All About Eggs, by Lucky Peach; The Dinner Table, by Kate Young and Ella Risbridger; London Feeds Itself, by Jonathan Nunn.
Let’s do something fun!
mslauragoodman [at] gmail [dot] com
@laurajgood