Life & Work with Beth Howard

Today we’d like to introduce you to Beth Howard.

Hi Beth, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My journey as a pie maker, author, and documentary filmmaker began in 2001, after quitting a job at a dot com in San Francisco. Too many hours creating websites for virtual outdoor experiences made me crave doing something tactile and tangible, something that engaged my senses…like make pie. I moved back to Los Angeles and landed a pie-baking job at Malibu Kitchen and spent a year there doing what I called a pie-baking sabbatical. That same year, I started my blog, The World Needs More Pie, and met my husband, a handsome German named Marcus. During our marriage, we lived in Stuttgart, Portland, and Saltillo, Mexico…and then on August 19, 2009, he died of a ruptured aorta. It was only when I started baking pie to share with neighbors and strangers that my grief began to ease. In 2010, I volunteered to be a pie judge at the Iowa State Fair. After the fair, I visited my birthplace of Ottumwa, Iowa and just a few miles down the road, I stumbled upon the American Gothic House–and it was for rent! I moved in on a whim and started the Pitchfork Pie Stand, selling my homemade pies to tourists on summer weekends. During the winters, I wrote several books — “Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Pie” and a pie cookbook called “Ms. American Pie.” I taught pie classes year-round. After four years, I became nearly as famous as the house (well, sometimes it felt that way). People wanted pie all the time! I could have expanded my business, but I was tired, so I moved out. I then used Marcus’s frequent flyer miles to travel around the world, making pies in nine countries. I wrote about my travels in my latest book, “World Piece: A Pie Baker’s Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding.” My latest project is making a documentary film called “Pieowa,” about the myriad ways pie is woven into Iowa’s culture. I divide my time between LA and a farm in Iowa, so I have the best of both worlds.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The grief over losing Marcus has been my biggest obstacle. It took me a long time to stop crying and start engaging with life again. Like Joan Baez said, “Action is the antidote to despair.” Making pie is what brought me back from the brink and set me on this whole new journey of spreading a message of hope and kindness. Of course, it hasn’t been a smooth road — it never is. When things don’t go the way I want or when I feel out of balance, I change course, like when I made the decision to move out of the American Gothic House and walk away from my business. There’s always an opportunity to create something new, and often what’s up ahead is better than you could have imagined.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Pie is my niche. I make it. I teach it. I write books and essays about it. And now I’m making a documentary film about it. But pie is really just a metaphor for peace, kindness, love, community, sharing, and so much more. After the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012, I traveled cross country and organized 60 volunteers to make 250 pies. We handed them out by the slice around Newtown to bring comfort to the grieving community. It’s truly amazing how a simple act of generosity, like sharing pie, can make the world a better place.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
What I learned from the grief over my husband is that no matter how low I get, I still have something left to give. And it’s in the giving where the healing takes place. To be of service to others, to reach out and show kindness, to be generous: that is the key to a happy life. I promise you, it’s not money or material goods! Other lessons I’ve learned: It’s okay to change your mind. Don’t listen to the naysayers. And don’t overthink things. Like with the Sandy Hook experience, it was a spontaneous idea, and I had no plan, no idea if it was going to work, but it all fell into place as we went. So just go for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theworldneedsmorepie.com
• Instagram: theworldneedsmorepie
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWorldNeedsMorePie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorldNeedsMorePie