August 5-9, 2026
A Quillisascut Farm Writing Workshop with Chef Greg Atkinson
Step into the welcoming heart of Quillisascut Farm for Kitchen Tales, storytelling and food-writing workshop led by chef, author, and Northwest culinary icon Greg Atkinson. Over several nourishing days, participants will gather in the farm kitchen to cook, eat, and share their stories around the long wooden tables.
We will explore how personal history, memory, and flavor intertwine. “Each of us has a story we want to tell,” claims Atkinson, “but what’s surprising is that the story we think we want to tell is not necessarily the story that wants to be told.” Tapping into memory through playful writing exercises and prompts Atkinson’s writing techniques are accessible to everyone.
With gentle humor, deep culinary knowledge, and lifelong devotion to stories, Atkinson can help you uncover the narratives hidden in your own pantry. Whether you’re preserving family recipes passed through generations, or creating new recipes that evoke the flavors and feelings you want to share with friends and loved ones, recalling pivotal kitchen moments, describing flavors from childhood, or describing the everyday rituals that shape our lives, will help you create food stories that grandchildren and great-grandchildren can one day read. Recipes in the right context can connect us over the generations.
A balance of hands-on writing time and contemplative time on the farm will afford participants an opportunity to shape their memories into a gift for future generations that honors heritage and celebrates life through the universal language of the kitchen.
Meals cooked and shared together, will turn each session into a living classroom. As we chop vegetables, knead dough, taste, laugh, and swap stories, participants will experience how writing grows naturally from the rhythm of cooking. Evenings invite reading, revising, and savoring the connections made around the table. Whether you’re a seasoned writer, a passionate home cook, or an elder hoping to preserve family stories for the next generation, Kitchen Tales offers a rare chance to slow down, gather close, and create stories that nourish.
Greg Atkinson worked his way through college by working at a Mexican restaurant in Bellingham, Washington and earned a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Education from Western Washington University in 1985. At Western, he met Betsy Lucas; they moved together to San Juan Island and were married in 1986. In Friday Harbor, Atkinson was chef at Cafe Bissett, and helped launch Friday Harbor House. He also wrote a column called In Season for the Journal of the San Juan Islands.
In 1989, Atkinson began contributing stories for the Taste column in Pacific Northwest, the Sunday news magazine of the Seattle Times, and Betsy gave birth to their first son Henry. For the next twenty-five years, the column provided readers with both recipes and stories that amused and touched readers. The column led to six books from Sasquatch Press including In Season, The Northwest Essentials Cookbook, Entertaining in the Northwest Style, West Coast Cooking, and At the Kitchen Table.
Greg served as Executive Chef at Seattle’s acclaimed Canlis Restaurant from 1997 – 2003. He launched the food and beverage program as executive chef at IslandWood on Bainbridge Island; and he taught culinary arts at Seattle Culinary Academy from 2008 to 2011. Greg has served as a regular contributor and Food Correspondent for KUOW, Seattle, as a Co- Host on KCTS Chefs. He was a contributing editor to Food Arts Magazine, New York, from 2000 until the magazine folded in 2013.
In 2012, Greg and Betsy opened Restaurant Marché on Bainbridge Island, and in 2025, they sold the restaurant.
August 5-9 Instruction, meals, and lodging include. (travel not included)
Tuition is $1475 and includes lodging, all meals, course instruction, hands-on workshops, and materials. If you are registering as part of a group (defined as 2 or more: ie couples, groups of friends, family members, etc) the tuition is $1425 per person. Transportation is not included.