Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor—a brief history As a world-renowned author, performer, and chef from rural South Carolina, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor has led a remarkably unique and complex life. Born April 4, 1937 in Hampton County, she was strongly influenced by her African American Gullah Geechee community. She was also determined to follow her imagination and creativity beyond the Lowcountry. At the age of 8, Vertamae Smart moved with her family to Philadelphia. Although her existence was largely sheltered, she established friendships with the future poet Larry Neal, and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Charles H. Fuller. There, she also met the up-and coming musician, Nina Simone who encouraged her move to Paris. Her basic knowledge of food preparation and Gullah culinary traditions would serve her well, as she embarked on her new journeys. At the Beat Hotel, she found a colony of expat artists and writers — the Scottish folk singer Alex Campbell, the American writer Jonathan Kozol, the French painter Lucien Fleury. She would meet and marry one of them, the sculptor Robert Grosvenor. In Paris, Verta Kali Smart, as she called herself, wrote articles about life at the Beat Hotel for the Left Bank This Month, a short-lived publication which she has also been credited with helping to produce. Bob and Vertamae would return to the U.S., settling in New York where she would find herself in the center of two American cultural movements. She bore two children, hosted parties for artists and intellectuals, pursued her goal of acting, and divorced. By 1963, she had embarked on a new journey that took her across the country and again across the ocean, as costume designer and sun-goddess for Sun-Ra’s mystical Arkestra. Back in the U.S., she published three books, including the critically acclaimed Vibration Cooking: The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (1970), which has been called “the book that changed the nature of academic scholarship about women, race, and food.” She also pursued a career as a journalist for National Public Radio. In 1983, Grosvenor earned a Robert F. Kennedy Award and an Ohio State Award for her work on the documentary, “Dafuskie: Never Enough Too Soon.” In addition to her work on several notable films, she became a contributing writer for Essence, Ebony, Jet, Publishers Weekly and Redbook. Today, at age seventy-five, Grosvenor lives in an artist colony in Ridgeland, South Carolina. Surrounded by photographs and other historical ephemera documenting her exceptional artistic life, Grosvenor is a treasure trove of stories about her experiences with some of the most influential artists, writers, actors, and musical performers of the twentieth century. Her long friendships with African American novelist and poet, Maya Angelou, and South African Jazz musician, Hugh Masekala, are examples of her wide circle of influential connections. Perhaps one of her most complex, yet fulfilling relationships was with the iconic musician and singer Nina Simone. With Simone, Grosvenor shared a deep friendship that often resembled sibling rivalry. Southern roots, love for family, and connections to Black culture kept the friendship between these creative women strong until Simone’s death in 2003.