NOEL RILEY FITCH, writer

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 Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation (1983), translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, and Anais: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin (1993), published in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish, and nominated for the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle. The Hemingway book has been published in Dutch; Literary Cafés of Paris in Dutch and German.

Fitch was born in New Haven, CT of Irish and Welsh parents and reared in the sagebrush of the Snake River Valley in Idaho.  She has lived in Quincy, MA; in Pasadena, La Jolla, and Los Angles, CA; and 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 (1922), the novel that would change world fiction.

Since then everything Fitch has written has some connection with Paris and the artists who lived and worked there, including her biographies of Sylvia Beach, Anais Nin, and Julia Child.
Her Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (1997, was written with Mrs. Child's full cooperation, is “told warmly and compellingly,” according to Publishers Weekly.  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, she authored The Grand Literary Cafés of Europe (London, 2006; US, 2007). Photographs are by Andy Midgley. This book covers the history of coffee and the coffeehouse and 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 in 2007.

In addition to being frequently interviewed on radio and television, Fitchappears in several documentary films, including Berenice Abbott: A View of the Twentieth Century (1992) and the A&E Biography of Julia Child first shown October 14, 1997 and based on her Appetite for Life.  She has also edited books and contributed to many others. Her journalism and her writing for scholarly publications are numerous.
Fitch 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 Louis O'Murphy], mistress of Louis XV, model for Rococo painter François Boucher, and subject of two pages in Casanova's memoirs.    

Ms. Fitch earned a Ph.D. in literature from Washington State University and at present lectures 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.  Ms. Fitch will be a featured speaker at the 2010 Festival of the Arts BOCA.