Noel Riley Fitch
Noël Riley Fitch is a biographer and historian of expatriate intellectuals in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. She is the author of several books on Paris (Literary Cafes of Paris, Walks in Hemingway’s Paris) as well as three biographies: Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (1983), translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian and French; Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin (1993), published in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish, and nominated for the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle; and she is the first authorized biographer of Julia Child - Appetite for Life: the Biography of Julia Child (1997). The Ernest Hemingway book, a biographical and geographical study of his Paris years, has been published in Dutch, the Cafés of Paris book in Dutch and German. Fitch was born in 1937 in New Haven, Connecticut of New England parents (John E. Riley and Dorcas Tarr) and raised with two younger sisters in the Snake River Valley in Idaho. She has lived in Quincy, Massachusetts; in Pasadena, La Jolla and Los Angeles, California; and in Paris, France. Her writing career began when she was a columnist for her high school and college school papers; but it was in graduate school that she discovered the story of Sylvia Beach’s bookshop on the Left Bank of Paris and decided she would tell the story of Sylvia Beach, her bookshop Shakespeare and Company (1919–1942), and the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses (the 1922 novel that would change world fiction). Since then every book Fitch has written has some connection with Paris and the artists who lived and worked there, including her biographies of Beach, Nin, and Child. In June 2011 Noel Riley Fitch was awarded the prestigious Prix de la Tour Montparnasse literary award in France for her book "Sylvia Beach: Une americaine `a Paris" [Perrin Publishers 2011], the French translation by Elizabeth Danger of Noel's widely acclaimed 1983 book "Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation" Her book Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (1997) was written with Mrs. Child’s full cooperation and exclusive authorization. Publishers Weekly said the book is written 'warmly and compellingly.' Kirkus Reviews called its “details. . .exquisite” and the story “exhaustively researched, charming.” Entertainment Weekly named it number five of the ten best books of the year. Following her earlier Literary Cafés of Paris, Fitch returned to the travel genre to author The Grand Literary Cafés of Europe (London, 2006; US, 2007). Covering the history of coffee and the coffeehouse, the book features nearly 40 cafes in 20 countries, from London to Moscow, Lisbon to Bucharest and Rome. Paris Café; The Sélect Crowd, co-authored with illustrator Rick Tulka, was published November 2007. Fitch appears in several documentary films, including Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, Berenice Abbott: A View of the Twentieth Century (1992), "Paris The Luminous Years" [PBS 2010] and the A&E Biography of Julia Child first shown October 14, 1997 and based on her book, Appetite for Life. Fitch earned a Ph.D. from Washington State University and has taught at Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego State University, University of Southern California, and the American University of Paris. She is presently writing the story of the Irish woman Louison O’Morphi [Marie Louise O’Murphy], mistress of Louis XV, model for Rococo painter François Boucher, and subject of a chapter in Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs. The book has grown out of many years of Franco-Irish history. Ms. Fitch recently retired from lecturing at both the University of Southern California and the American University of Paris. She and her husband live in Los Angeles, Paris, and New York City. She has one grown daughter.