TAYLOR, Mary F.

PERSONAL: Married; children: one son. Education: Earned psychology degree; received training in Gestalt therapy; attended Le Cordon Bleu (Paris, France); Ecôle des Trois Gourmandes, grand diploma. Hobbies and other interests: Yoga, meditation.

ADDRESSES: Home—3020 Jefferson St., Boulder, CO 80304. Agent—Jane Dystel, Dystel and Goderich Literary Management, 1 Union Square West, Suite 904, New York, NY, 10003. E-mail—authors@whatareyouhungryfor.net.

CAREER: Author and counselor. Instructor and counselor on diet and nutrition.; Appeared in video Low Fat Cooking Techniques with Graham Kerr.

WRITINGS:

New Vegetarian Classics: Soups, photographs by Diane Farris, Crossing Press (Freedom, CA), 1994.

New Vegetarian Classics: Entrées, photographs by Diane Farris, Crossing Press (Freedom, CA), 1995.

Lunch Crunch: Beating the Lunchbox Blues, The Yoga Workshop (Boulder, CO), 1997.

(With Lynn Ginsberg) What Are You Hungry For?: Women, Food, and Spirituality, illustrations by Josef Pusedu, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Coauthor with Lynn Ginsberg of Better Living through Balance, published by Natural Foods Merchandiser. Yoga Journal author of articles and column "Eating Wisely", beginning 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: After winning a personal battle with anorexia, Mary F. Taylor studied the relationship between food and happiness. She wondered why women equated thinness with happiness when a woman who is starving is certainly not happy. Taylor concluded that women use food to fill a spiritual void. As long as this void exists, diets will never work. With coauthor Lynn Ginsberg, Taylor published her discoveries in the book, What Are You Hungry For?: Women, Food, and Spirituality. Taylor and Ginsberg contend that the body issues women suffer stem from their disconnection with their personal selves. What Are You Hungry For? demonstrates how mind and body practices such as yoga can help women overcome body/food issues.

Unlike other "diet" books, What Are You Hungry For? focuses not on the right foods to eat, but on how to think about food. The authors want readers to consider how much time they have spent fantasizing about food and obsessing about their bodies. Jane Dystel of Publishers Weekly concluded that readers "will learn to savor the 'rasa' (essence) of food and to eat what feels right for them."

Taylor and Ginsberg travel throughout the country conducting workshops on women, food, and spirituality.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, December 17, 2001, Jane Dystal, review of What Are You Hungry For?: Women, Food, and Spirituality.

ONLINE

Mary Taylor Web site,http://www.whatareyouhungryfor.net (May 28, 2003).

St. Martin's Press Web site,http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/stmartins/ (May 28, 2003), review of What Are You Hungry For?.

Yoga Chicago Web site,http://www.yogachicago.com (May 28, 2003), review of What Are You Hungry For?.*