Janet Fletcher trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at Berkeley's celebrated Chez Panisse. She is a staff food writer and weekly cheese columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, where her writing has twice won the James Beard Foundation Award as well as the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Bert Greene Award.

She is the author or co-author of 18 books on food and wine, including The Niman Ranch Cookbook, The Cheese Course and the Four Seasons Pasta (both Chronicle Books), and a regular contributor to Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Metropolitan Home and other national magazines. Janet is a certified Master Gardener and tends a large ornamental and edible garden at her home in Napa Valley.