Cookbook author John Schlimm

The Friends of Hanley Library and Pitt-Bradford’s Hospitality Management Club will host a conversation, food sampling and book signing with award-winning author John Schlimm next week.

The event will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, in the Harriett B. Wick Chapel. During the event, which is free and open to the public, Schlimm will discuss his newest cookbooks, “Grilling Vegan Style” and “The Tipsy Vegan,” as well as other topics such as entertaining, social activism and writing.

The program will include an informal presentation and audience question-and-answer period with the author. Also, samples from the recipes in Schlimm’s cookbooks will be served, allowing the audience a taste of a few of his dishes. Copies of “Grilling Vegan Style” and “The Tipsy Vegan” will be available from The Panther Shop for purchase, and Schlimm will sign them at the event. Refreshments will be served beginning at 7 p.m. with the presentation set to begin at 7:30 p.m.

A member of one of the oldest brewing families in the United States, beginning with his great-great-grandfather Peter Straub, who founded the Straub Brewery in the 1870s, Schlimm has received multiple awards for his books and has been featured on such national media outlets as Martha Stewart’s “Everyday Food,” “The Splendid Table,” QVC, NPR, and “Fox and Friends,” as well as media outlets across the United States during his cross-country book tours. In April, Schlimm delivered the commencement address at Pitt-Bradford. He is currently at work on two new book projects.

The author of “The Ultimate Beer Lover’s Cookbook,” which is the largest beer cookbook ever published, Schlimm transitioned to a vegan lifestyle several years ago. This included his appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” where he explained why this son of a former butcher and meat-processing business owner from Pennsylvania chose to go meatless.

Determined to blast through the stereotypes and clichés surrounding the vegan lifestyle, last fall, Schlimm drew once more upon his boozy roots as a member of the Straub Brewing family to release his first plant-based party cookbook, “The Tipsy Vegan,” which has more than 75 plant-based food recipes that all use alcohol as a main ingredient. This past summer, Schlimm released his latest cookbook, “Grilling Vegan Style,” which contains more than 125 plant-based recipes for the grill. Named by Publishers Weekly as one of the top cookbooks for 2012, “Grilling Vegan Style” broke new ground as the world’s first comprehensive, vegan grilling handbook and cookbook.

Schlimm’s cookbooks are what he calls “small-town friendly” in terms of the ingredients and tools he uses, and he likes to think of them as “parties-in-a-book” to which everyone is invited, whether you are an avid meat-eater, a lifelong vegan or merely veggie-curious.

“The only requirement for enjoying my cookbooks is you have to want to have fun,” Schlimm said.

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