Hanna Raskin is founder of The Food Section, a newsletter covering food and drink in the American South. Her effort to invigorate independent food journalism across the region won the support of Substack Local, a $1 million initiative to support independent news writers.In its first year, The Food Section was named a finalist in the Best Newsletter category of awards contests sponsored by the Online Journalism Association and the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and won LION Publishers' Best New Business prize. It was also recognized by the Society for Features Journalism, finishing second only to The Los Angeles Times in the restaurant criticism category.In 2023, The Food Section received a James Beard Foundation award for Dining & Travel coverage, and was named the nation's Best Solo Newsletter by New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Center, sponsor of the American Journalism Online awards.The author of Yelp Help and a frequent contributor to Garden & Gun, Raskin still gets calls every Christmas about her graduate thesis on Jews and Chinese food. In 2018, she was elected president of the Association of Food Journalists. She's currently serving as resident columnist for Gravy, Southern Foodways Alliance's print quarterly.