Alisa Smith

Alisa Smith is a Canadian journalist and nonfiction writer who coauthored Plenty with J.B. MacKinnon. The book grew from the pair’s year-long attempt to eat food produced within one hundred miles of their Vancouver home. Their experiment began as a practical response to the distance traveled by ordinary ingredients, then widened into an examination of seasonality, farming, energy use, community, and the pleasures and frustrations of local eating. The 2007 United States edition carried the subtitle One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally; a 2008 Clarkson Potter paperback followed. Canadian readers encountered the project as The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, making the short title Plenty only one part of its publication identity. Smith brought experience as a freelance journalist, while MacKinnon contributed a background in narrative nonfiction. Their alternating perspectives keep the book grounded in domestic choices while connecting a Vancouver kitchen to larger questions about food systems and place.