September 22, 2025

Let's Go To Yerevan!

Hey guess what I’m in Yerevan!!

A little over a year ago, I got an email from an institute in Yerevan, Armenia called TUMO Center for Creative Technologies.

TUMO is a very cool free educational institution for teenagers, focused on art, music, and technology. They have classes on animation, programming, illustration, music, photography, and more! They asked if I’d be interested in coming to Yerevan to lead a workshop on recipe comics.

I wrote them back to learn more, and mentioned that I own a very good cookbook of Armenian food called Lavash, and that I had met one of the coauthors, Kate Leahy, who is extremely cool and nice.

Well, the TUMO people said, not only are we aware of that cookbook, but we helped make it happen! And the book itself only exists because John Lee, the book’s photographer, was invited to teach a food photography workshop at TUMO, and fell in love with the country (and the food).

I knew I wouldn’t have the bandwidth to write up a two week lesson while I was still working on Let’s Make Cocktails, so we planned for my workshop to happen in September 2025. And now guess what!! September 2025 is here!!

By the time this newsletter posts, I will be in Yerevan, probably finishing up my first class! I’m so nervous and excited; I have never been in this part of the world, and I can’t wait to see all the sights and eat all the food. And I can’t wait to show a roomful of students how I make recipe comics!

I’ll be posting lots of photos to my instagram if you want to follow along, and I’m going to do my best to draw my next newsletter comic from my apartment in Kentron.

Upcoming things:

Right now: I can’t believe I’m in Yerevan!

October 11: I will be leading a recipe comics workshop at the Logan Square Library in Chicago!

October 18: I will be exhibiting at SLICE in St. Louis!

October 24: I’ll be in Madison signing books and speaking at the Wisconsin Book Festival!

December 6: I’ll be speaking on a panel and selling books at Sulzer Regional Library in Chicago!

What I’m into lately:

I normally recommend books here, but today I want to tell you about Everything Cookbooks, a podcast that the aforementioned Kate Leahy makes with fellow cookbook writers Kristin Donnelly, Andrea Nguyen, and Molly Stevens. It’s a brilliant show all about cookbooks and how they get concepted, written, tested, photographed, published, marketed, and everything in between. Sometimes they interview cookbook authors about their work, and sometimes they just have fantastically insightful chats about how to find an agent or how to pitch your cookbook project to a publisher. I often feel like I lucked into making cookbooks in a backwards sort of way, so this podcast has been amazingly helpful to me. I’ve learned so much about the industry and the business, and been so inspired by everyone’s stories. I’m assuming if you’re subscribed to this newsletter it’s because you like food and cooking, and I bet you’d really like Everything Cookbooks. (^_^)

What Toki’s into lately:

Being perfect and precious!! How am I going to go two weeks without this floof?? (T_T)

(Actually, Yerevan has at least one cat café. If I start going through Toki withdrawal I’ll poke my head in there.)