Founder of The Nashville Food Project Tallu Schuyler Quinn Has Died

Tallu Schuyler Quinn, the founder of The Nashville Food Project, succumbed to glioblastoma, an aggressive, terminal form of brain cancer, on Thursday evening. She died in hospice, surrounded by her family. She was 42.

When the organization was founded a little more than a decade ago, Quinn had a radical vision of a movement that would not just provide emergency relief to hungry people, but also connect people to food systems and the land in order to remove barriers that keep them undernourished and underfed.

Quinn grew up in Nashville. After getting a bachelor’s degree in papermaking and bookbinding, she headed to seminary at Columbia University. With a Master of Divinity degree, she went to Nicaragua, where she worked on food-security projects with resident farmers. It was there that she started to see food differently: not as a commodity, but as a “vibrant tool for healing.” 

The Food Project partners with anti-poverty organizations across the county, making and delivering 5,000 nutritious meals every week for Nashvillians in need. Its agricultural program includes a 3-acre farm at Mill Ridge Park where community members grow their own food. Another arm of the Food Project’s agricultural program is Growing Together, a market garden program that supports people who want to sell produce for income and connect more deeply to food systems. 

Last year, Quinn discussed the future of TNFP with the Scene: “I want us, as we move forward into the future, to be emboldened by constantly pursuing what we know we’re here to do. And what we’re here to do is constantly show up in active ways for people who are oppressed, for people who do not have power, and not to give them power, but to uncover whatever barriers or shackles are in the way that keeps us from being the just society that we are here to be.”

Quinn was diagnosed with grade four glioblastoma in 2020. Throughout her illness, she maintained a public journal on Caring Bridge, parts of which will be collected in her book. What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death will be released by Penguin Random House in April. 

In her last journal entry on Sept. 28, she wrote: “​​The sun will soon set on what I have experienced as my love-drenched life. The tears are so close to the surface these days. But I am filled with the hope that healing comes for all of us, even for those of us who cannot seem to believe it. But it will for me, and I believe it will for you, and for every one of us confused, exhausted, hurting, broken pilgrims on this way.” 

This afternoon, The Nashville Food Project published a tribute to Quinn, which reads in part: 

Along with a boundless energy and open, accepting love for humanity, Tallu also embodied the values of the Food Project: hospitality, stewardship, justice, interdependence, learning and transformation. The latter she often spoke about with a “fiercest hope” that people and situations can change. An inspiring teacher, speaker, writer and leader, she could fire up a crowd to action, weed a raised bed or clean out a walk-in cooler with equal intensity. She championed and shared the joy, hope and love in difficult food justice work. But even as an uplifting visionary to all those around her, she wasn’t afraid to deliver a realistic picture too, ever-empathetic and aiming to untangle the systemic problems that lead to the need for food justice work in the first place.

Below, watch a clip of Quinn singing "Lead Me to the Rock" with Sam Bartholomew, as shared by Bethany Hills Camp.