About France Today
Now in its 25th year of publication, France Today is the definitive American authority on French travel and culture. Each monthly issue is filled with beautifully written and illustrated stories on French travel, food and wine, history, culture, fashion, design, shopping, real estate and more, giving readers an insider’s look at France’s most beautiful destinations, newest restaurants, smartest hotels and most intriguing people. With 45,000 readers every month, France Today is the only monthly magazine about France published in the United States.
Our website, FranceToday.com, is a unique online resource for Francophiles and travelers to France, packed with practical information, tips on the hottest or still undiscovered destinations, hotels, restaurants, shopping and much more.
Along with extensive content from our print publication, FranceToday.com also offers lots more, including a comprehensive online calendar of must-see events; our weekly Editor’s Picks; our web-exclusive Chef’s Corner with dozens of recipes from the best French chefs; and Made in France, our reviews of the best French products today and a look at some of the skilled artisans who make them.
Who Publishes France Today?
France Today, founded in 1985, is published by FrancePress LLC, a privately owned company headquartered in New York. The company was acquired in July 2005 by Louis F. Kyle.
Louis F. Kyle, a 26-year veteran of the publishing industry, has served as the president of the Internet Division of Trader Classified Media, Group Publisher at Ziff Davis France, president of the Cobb Group Europe, and owner and publisher of the Asian Edition of Women’s Wear Daily.
Editorial Staff
Editor-in-Chief Judy Fayard, a native of New Orleans, has lived in Paris for 30 years, working as Paris Bureau Chief of Women’s Wear Daily and W, European Editor of Life magazine, Senior Editor of European Travel & Life magazine, Editor of France Discovery Guide and Editor of WHERE Paris. She also contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal Europe, writing about art and opera, and is the author of L’Esprit du Goût: La Provence (Flammarion).
Associate Editor and Web Manager Vivian Thomas, a native of New Jersey, fell in love with France on a college trip and has remained in love ever since, writing about France for the San Francisco Examiner, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Spa Magazine, Paris Notes, various inflight magazines and other publications. Before joining France Today, she was also Associate Editor of WHERE Paris from 2003 to 2006. She now divides her time between Paris and Palo Alto, California.
Columnists
Political columnist Walter Wells started his newspaper career with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in Richmond, Virginia, and The New York Times. In 1980 he moved to Paris, where he served as editor, managing editor and executive editor of the International Herald Tribune. In 2006 he was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur for his “remarkable contribution to tightening the bonds between France and the United States”. He and his wife, food writer Patricia Wells, now divide their time between Paris and their home in the South of France.
A La Carte restaurant columnist Alexander Lobrano, a Connecticut Yankee who has made Paris his home for 20 years, formerly European correspondent for Gourmet, writes the Eurofile column for the New York Times, and regularly contributes articles on food and travel to Condé Nast Traveler, Forbes Life, Saveur and other publications. His book Hungry for Paris, a personal tour of the city’s best restaurants, is published by Random House. www.hungryforparis.com
Boutique Beat shopping columnist Julie Street is a British journalist based in Paris for 17 years, writing culture and lifestyle pieces for British and Australian publications including The Guardian, The Independent, Wallpaper and Australian Elle. She has also produced and presented programs for Radio France Internationale, working mostly in the music department.
Susan Herrmann Loomis is a food writer who lives in Normandy, where she runs the cooking school On Rue Tatin. She is the author of ten books, including Cooking at Home: On Rue Tatin and the recently published Nuts in the Kitchen. Every month, she guides readers through the wonderful world of French cuisine in her column French Kitchen.
www.onruetatin.com
Chicago-born Jean Bond Rafferty, who writes the Design Now column, has lived in Paris for more than 35 years. She is currently a contributing editor at Town & Country and also writes regularly for the International Herald Tribune, Veranda, Art + Auction and German Architectural Digest, covering lifestyle, design and decoration, travel, art and antiques and real estate.
British journalist Suzanna Chambers lives in a small village in the south of France with her husband and their three children. She is the editor of the luxury real estate magazine Carpe Diem, and writes France Today’s regular monthly Real Estate column. She also contributes news and property stories to The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, The Express, The French Paper, Angloinfo.com and various lifestyle magazines.
Regular Contributors
Thirza Vallois has lived in Paris for nearly half a century, and holds several postgraduate degrees from the Sorbonne. She is the author of the three-volume series Around and About Paris; Romantic Paris; and Aveyron, A Bridge To French Arcadia. She also wrote the Paris section of the Encarta encyclopedia and Hemispheres’ award-winning story and video Three Perfect Days in Paris. She travels worldwide lecturing on France, is a freelance writer for the international press and contributes to PBS, CNN, Discovery, The Travel Channel, NPR and, in Britain, the BBC and Radio 4.
British journalist Chris Redman began his career with a French news agency before joining Time magazine, where he served as economic and national security correspondent, Paris bureau chief, senior editor of Time International, managing editor of Time Europe and editor-at-large for Time Inc. He left Time to set up a TV documentary production company, but remains a regular contributor to Time, Fortune and other publications. He and his wife Janet divide their time among homes in Britain, Ireland and the Gers in southwest France, where Chris planted vines this year and is hoping his winemaking skills can be developed in time for the first vintage.
Harriet Welty Rochefort grew up in Iowa and earned her M.S.J. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. As a longtime freelance journalist based in Paris, she has written on French business and culture for the International Herald Tribune, European Travel & Life and Time. She is the author of French Toast and French Fried (St. Martin’s Press), writes a monthly letter for The Paris Pages (www.paris.org/Kiosque) and teaches journalism at the Paris Institute for Political Studies, familiarly known as Sciences Po. www.harrietweltyrochefort.com
Lanie Goodman moved to the South of France in 1988 from New York City, where she taught French Literature at Rutgers and City University of New York, Baruch College. She is currently based in Nice as a freelance arts and travel writer for publications including Town & Country, Condé Nast Traveler, Interior Design, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal Europe. She has also translated several French novels including The Mustache by Emmanuel Carrère and The Machine by René Belletto.
Agnès Lascève is a native Parisienne, influenced from childhood by the important role that gastronomy and l’art de vivre played in her multi-generational family. After art studies, she worked for more than 20 years in the photographic departments of several major French magazines. In 2000, she opted for a change, enrolled in three years of writing classes and embarked on a freelance writing career. Named Gastronomic Journalist of the Year in 2005, she contributes regularly to the French magazines Edgar, Number Wine and GaultMillau.
Julien Bisson grew up in Orléans and moved to Paris to study politics and journalism at Sciences Po. After foreign adventures in Naples and San Francisco, where he headed the Culture section of Le Journal Français (now part of France-Amérique), he settled in Montmartre. Currently a contributor to both France Today and France-Amérique, he is also a regular freelance writer for French publications including Lire and Technikart.
Photographers
A native of southwest France, photographer Guy Marineau has been photographing fashion and fashion shows in Paris, London, Milan and around the world since 1976, first for Fairchild Publications, Women’s Wear Daily and W, and later for Vogue and other magazines. He has worked privately for most of the top Paris fashion houses , and he continues to shoot both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections every season. He is co-author of Le Palace: Remember, a photographic book about the legendary Paris nightclub. A writer and poet in his spare time, he is also an accomplished gardener, and is currently resurrecting the garden of his home in Béarn, which was devastated by the fierce storms of January 2009.
As a young photographer based in New York, Bob Peterson specialized in portraits for Life and Sports Illustrated: Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Mario Puzo, Nelson Rockefeller, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. After returning to his home town of Seattle, he continued to shoot for Time Inc. magazines—including Life cover stories on Clint Eastwood, among others—while also moving into advertising photography and winning two CLIOs and a number of other ad world awards. His corporate clients have included Adidas, Honda, Boeing, IBM and Nike. He also directs television commercials—Nike, State Farm Insurance, Budweiser, Aloha Airlines—and has published two books, Seattle Discovered and Edge Walking On the Western Rim. A gourmet cook and wine connoisseur, Peterson also travels frequently in France, most recently covering the city of Bordeaux, the Médoc wine country and Beaujolais for France Today.
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