Francine Segan, one of America’s foremost experts on Italian cuisine, is an engaging public speaker, author, TV personality and consultant. A noted food historian and James Beard-nominated author of six books including “Dolci: Italy’s Sweets” and “Pasta Modern: New & Inspired Recipes from Italy” (both published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang).

Her many TV appearances include “Today” and “Early Show,” and she has been featured on numerous specials for PBS, the Food Network and the History, Sundance and Discovery channels.

She is the U.S. spokesperson for several distinguished Italian companies including Lavazza, Felicetti, Amedei and Garofalo. As spokesperson for Carrabba’s Italian Grill, a chain of 350 restaurants, she is featured in their La Pasta Vita video series.

Francine co-edited “Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl,” a 2-volume encyclopedia, which was a finalist for the coveted Gourmand World Cookbook Award given each year in Paris. She contributed the chapter on Ruth Reichl for the book “Icons Of American Cooking” and  translated two books — “Nutella Passion” and “The Pleasures of Espresso” — from Italian into English for Giunti, Italy’s largest privately owned publisher.

Segan writes for several magazines including Epicurious, Food Arts and Gastronomica. She writes extensively about chocolate and authored several chapters of Rutgers University’s catalogue “Bitter Sweet: The Chocolate Show” and contributed the chapter “Italian Chocolate” for the upcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of Sweets. She lectures across the country for the prestigious speaker’s bureau Cassidy & Fishman and is a frequent guest speaker at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., Virginia Fine Arts Museum and Museum of Natural History in New York.