David Cook

In 2023, he co-founded Food as a Verb, our region's only independent media devoted to local food reporting and storytelling. For over a decade, he wrote the city column for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, winning the ASNE Mike Royko Award, multiple first prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and the national Sigma Delta Chi Sports Columnist Award for his commentary on the resurrection of The Howard School’s baseball team. 

In 2025, David authored the storybook for the application that led to Chattanooga becoming North America's first National Park City and also its accompanying website. 

Cook has also published with Oxford American, Civil Eats, The Sun, Geez, Utne Reader, Common Good and other national outlets. 

In 2023, he opened Walden Writing, a creative+writing firm for select clients, including the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce, Chattanooga Preparatory School, Fast Break Athletics, Thousand Hills Co., Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga and Chattanooga Engineering Group. 

In 2021, he was named the NAACP’s James R. Mapp Citizen of the Year. A veteran educator, Cook is a certified Mindful Schools Instructor, a Marshall Memorial Fellow, a Red Bank High Hall of Fame inductee and beginning, often blundering, farmer.