Paris Was Ours (34 page)

Janine di Giovanni
, the author of
The Place at the End of the World
and other books, is a reporter who has covered numerous war zones, including Chechnya and Iraq, for such publications as the
Times
of London and
Vanity Fair
.

Brigid Dorsey
lived in Maine, upstate New York, and New Jersey after Paris. She is a writer and editor who lives in Columbia County, New York.

Alicia Drake
wrote
The Beautiful Fall
, a nonfiction account of fashion in Paris in the 1970s, which was published in 2006. She is working on a novel.

Roxane Farmanfarmaian
was born in Salt Lake City and raised in Holland and now lives in England, where she is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. A former editor and journalist, she wrote
Blood and Oil: A Prince’s Memoir of Iran, from the Shah to the Ayatollah
.

Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni
is a Paris-based journalist and author of a biography of the Oscar-winning film producer Sam Spiegel. She has worked at Chanel and
W
magazine and was European editor of American
Harper’s Bazaar
.

Mark Gaito
is a television producer and writer who lives in Paris.

Andrew Hurley
(translator of Zoé Valdés’s text) has translated numerous works of fiction and poetry from the Spanish and is perhaps best known for his rendering of Jorge Luis Borges’s
Collected Fictions
. He is a professor emeritus of literature and translation at the University of Puerto Rico.

Diane Johnson
is a novelist (
Le Divorce, Lying Low
, etc.) and critic who lives part of the time in Paris. Her latest novel is called
Lulu in Marrakech
.

Alice Kaplan
teaches French at Yale University. Her recent books include
The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
and
The Interpreter
.

Patric Kuh
is the author of
The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: The Coming of Age of American Restaurants
and is the restaurant critic of
Los Angeles
magazine.

Julie Lacoste
began her blog, Un temps de retard (A Delayed Time: The Diary of a Homeless Mother), in September 2008. She ended it the following year after moving into a subsidized apartment in Paris. She works at a university library.

David Lebovitz
lived in San Francisco for twenty years and worked in the pastry department at Chez Panisse. He currently lives in Paris and blogs at davidlebovitz.com. His memoir,
The
Sweet Life in Paris
, was published in 2009. His latest cookbook is
Ready for Dessert
.

Janet McDonald
was the author of a memoir,
Project Girl
, and six novels for young adults. Her last book,
Off-Color
, was published in 2007. She died that year, at the age of fifty-three, in Paris.

Jeremy Mercer
is the author of four books, including
Time Was Soft There
, his memoir of life in a Parisian bookstore, and
When the Guillotine Fell
, a philosophical investigation of the last execution in France. He lives in Marseilles.
www.jeremymercer.net
.

Noelle Oxenhandler
is the author of three books, including her recent memoir
The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul
. She teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University.

Christina Phillips
(translator of Samuel Shimon’s text) has translated a number of works from the Arabic, including, most recently, Naguib Mahfouz’s
Morning and Evening Talk
. She lives in London.

Joe Queenan
is the author of ten books, including
Closing Time
, a memoir that was published in 2009. He lives in Tarrytown, New York, and has returned to Paris on at least twenty different occasions.

Penelope Rowlands
is the author of, most recently,
A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters
and is the editor of this anthology.

Stacy Schiff
’s year in Paris resulted in
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
, winner of the
George Washington Book Prize. Schiff won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for
Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
. Her most recent book is
Cleopatra: A Biography
.

Karen Schur
was born in South America and has lived in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the South Pacific. She now lives in Thailand, outside Bangkok, and is at work on a novel.

David Sedaris
is the author of numerous books of personal essays, including, most recently,
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
. He won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2001. He lives in Paris.

Samuel Shimon
is an Assyrian writer and editor. Born and raised in Iraq, he has also lived in Damascus, Amman, Beirut, Nicosia, Cairo, Tunis, and Paris. He has been based in London since 1996. His novel,
The Assyrian Guerrilla
, has just been published in Arabic.

Valerie Steiker
is the culture editor at
Vogue
and the author of
The Leopard Hat: A Daughter’s Story
. She coedited the anthology
Brooklyn Was Mine
and has worked on the editorial staffs of
Artforum
and the
New Yorker
.

Judith Thurman
, a staff writer at the
New Yorker
, is the author of
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire
;
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
, which won the National Book Award in 1983; and
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette
.

Lily Tuck
’s novel,
The News from Paraguay
, won the 2004 National Book Award. Her most recent work is a biography,
Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante
.

Zoé Valdés
is the author of
Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada
and
Dear First Love
, among other novels. She has been named a chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Born in Cuba, she has lived in Paris since 1995.

Véronique Vienne
is the author of the best-selling
The Art of Doing Nothing
and of numerous articles, essays, and books on design, photography, and architecture. She now lives in Paris after having spent most of her adult life in New York.

Judith Warner
is the author, most recently, of
We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication
, as well as
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety
. She is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of the
New York Times
.

Caroline Weber
teaches French and comparative literatures at Barnard College and Columbia University. Her most recent book is
Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
. She contributes to the
New York Times Book Review
and other publications.

Walter Wells
worked at the
International Herald Tribune
for twenty-five years and retired as its executive editor in 2005. He was awarded the French Légion d’honneur the following year. His
We’ve Always Had Paris … and Provence
, written with his wife, the food writer Patricia Wells, was published in 2008.

Edmund White
won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his biography of Jean Genet. He has also written eight novels, several memoirs, and short biographies of Proust and Rimbaud. He teaches writing at Princeton University.

C. K. Williams
is the author of numerous books of poetry, including
The Singing
, which won the National Book Award in 2003, and a translator from both the French and ancient Greek. He teaches at Princeton and lives part of each year in France.

Most of the essays in this book are original to this volume and are copyrighted in the name of each contributor and published with his or her permission. The English translation of Zoé Valdés’s essay is copyright © Andrew Hurley.

Pieces that were previously published appear here in a slightly different form and are credited as follows:

Janine di Giovanni’s essay is copyright © Janine di Giovanni and published with the permission of the Daily Telegraph/Telegraph Media Group Limited 2009.

Excerpt from Alice Kaplan,
French Lessons
:
A Memoir
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press and the author.

Julie Lacoste’s blog entry, from
Un temps de retard by Julie
,
http://www.untempsderetard.blogspot.com
, was posted on November 23, 2008, and is reprinted by permission of its author.

Excerpt from
The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious—and Perplexing—City
by David Lebovitz, copyright © 2009 by David Lebovitz. Used by permission of Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Excerpt from
chapter 7
from part 1 of
Project Girl
by Janet McDonald. Copyright © 1999 by Janet McDonald.
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Excerpt from
Time Was Soft There
by Jeremy Mercer, copyright © 2005 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

Noelle Oxenhandler’s “La Bourdonneuse” was first published in the
New Yorker
on May 10, 1993, and is reprinted by permission of its author.

David Sedaris’s “The Tapeworm Is In” is from
Me Talk Pretty One Day
copyright © 2000 by David Sedaris and reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company.

Stacy Schiff’s essay originally appeared in
Gourmet
magazine and is reproduced here by permission of the author.

The excerpt by Samuel Shimon is from
An Iraqi in Paris
, copyright © 2005, published by Banipal Books, London, and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Valerie Steiker’s essay is adapted from her book,
The Leopard Hat: A Daughter’s Story
(New York: Pantheon, 2002) and is reprinted by permission of Random House.

Judith Warner’s essay originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in the Outlook section of the
Washington Post
and is reproduced here by permission of the author.

Excerpt from pp. 15–21 from
We’ve Always Had Paris … And Provence
by Patricia Wells and Walter Wells. Copyright © 2008 by Patricia Wells Ltd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Edmund White excerpt is copyright © Edmund White, c/o
Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN.

“Racists” and “On the Métro” from
Collected Poems
by C. K. Williams. Copyright © 2006 by C. K. Williams. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.