Source: Simon And Schuster

Also to Star Opposite Kelly Ripa in New ABC Pilot 'Hope & Faith'

NEW YORK, April 10th, 2003-- Actress Faith Ford, recipient of five Emmy Award nominations and two consecutive Golden Globe Award nominations for her ten-year portrayal of reporter "Corky Sherwood" on the CBS series "Murphy Brown," is at work on her first cookbook, Cooking with Faith, to be published by Scribner in May of 2004. Richard Abate at International Creative Management Negotiated the agreement, which is for North American rights, with Beth Wareham, Director of Lifestyle Publishing at Scribner.

"When we met with Faith," said Beth Wareham, "she completely charmed us with memories of growing up in a small town in the American South and her adventures pursuing an acting career. Through it all, she cooked. When she said no recipe should be longer than you can tell a friend over the phone, well, we knew we were in the presence of the real deal and that cooks all over the country would love her."

A multigenerational Southern cookbook, Cooking with Faith will draw on Ford's childhood in a Louisiana town where she learned how to cook down-home food at the knees of her Grandmother and Mother. Southern food is one of America's great regional cuisines -- the very heart and soul of comfort food. Though it's hardly what one would imagine on the table of a trim, fit actress, this is exactly the food Ford has continued to prepare throughout her Hollywood career.

In Cooking with Faith, she dishes up the classics as well as creates a new generation of great cooking -- more health-conscious updates of the old Southern favorites. On decadent, devil-may-care days there is her mother's deep-friend catfish with a side of old-fashioned potato salad. For regular, workday meals there's Faith's version, Oven-Fried Pecan-Crusted Catfish.

Faith will season the book with stories of growing up in a family of gifted home cooks in rural, central Louisiana.

Ford will write the book with Melissa Clark, a food journalist and regular contributor to The New York Times, Food & Wine, and Real Simple. In addition, Clark is the best-selling author of 13 cookbooks, collaborating with such New York chefs as Daniel Boulud, David Bouley, and Claudia Fleming.

Beyond her publishing plans, Ford will next star opposite Kelly Ripa in "Hope & Faith," the Touchstone Television pilot for ABC. Ford will play "Hope," a wife and mother whose world is turned upside down when her sister "Faith" (Ripa), a soap opera diva, comes to stay with Hope and her family after being fired from the cast of a soap opera.

Ford joins the Scribner cookbook program which includes upcoming books from Bobby Flay, Tom Valenti, Annie Somerville, Giuliano Hazan, and Al Roker as well as a revision of the Joy of Cooking and Harold McGee's classic On Food & Cooking, among others.

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