Bacon on the Bookshelf: Carrington Fox

Bacon on the Bookshelf: Carrington Fox

Our Aunt Carrington is one of our favorite people and fiercest supporters. You should know how awesome she is.

Bacon on the Bookshelf: Carrington Fox

Carrington Fox is a fearless urban farmer with a microflock of chickens by day, a renowned food writer for the Nashville Scene by night.  She’s just “Mom” to three sons ages eight, nine, and eleven, all attending University School of Nashville.  You may have seen her at Artclectic, USN’s major art show and fundraiser, which she recently co-chaired for the second year in a row.  We all may be getting to know her quite well in the years to come:  she’s also the wife of exciting mayoral candidate David Fox.

If you’d like to know Carrington better right now, check out her marvelous blog and collection of recent Nashville Scene articles at Carringtonfoxauthor.com.  She recounts with great wit various adventures in her own kitchen and in Nashville’s hot new restaurants.  One of my favorite episodes involves her foray into kombucha production:

Like so many paths to hell, my road to kombucha addiction was paved with good intentions.  I started hanging out with some cool girls.  They grew vegetables and raised chickens.  They composted and crafted.  I wanted them to like me.  When one of them led me to her pantry and lifted the cheesecloth from a vintage wide-mouth candy jar of aging kombucha – a beverage hailed for its dubious immune-boosting properties – I recoiled… but I wanted to fit in.  I took a sip.  I tried not to inhale.  Soon I was breaking bad with my own kombucha operation.

When she’s not breaking bad in her home lab, you might find her sipping a Belle Meade Bourbon.  “My brother and nephews have just revived the brand,” she says, “which my great-great grandfather produced when he came to Nashville in the 1800’s.  Having a bottle in the house makes me feel like part of a longer story.”

Don’t let me give you the wrong impression!  Carrington is one of the healthiest and most balanced individuals you’re likely to meet.  She’d rather be shopping an estate sale on a Friday morning – her favorite guilty pleasure – than indulging in a shot of bourbon or anything else.  If I had to describe her in one word, I’d say that Carrington is “thriving,” in every regard.  She attributes this in part to a wonderful childhood in Nashville:  “Happy is an understatement for my life on a dead-end street, in a house crowded with funny friends, loyal neighbors, weird pets and parents who loved me and my brother beyond imagining.  I’m pretty much trying to recreate it for my own kids, two blocks from where I grew up.”

Today, Carrington describes what she learned reading scripts for the nearly brand-new Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.  There’s still time to submit your screenplay:  the deadline for the second annual competition is not until January!  

To learn how her experience as a script reader changed her life (or at least her writing), read on…