David Downie
A native San Franciscan, I've called Paris home since 1986. My travel, food and arts features have appeared in over fifty magazines and newspapers worldwide, from Gourmet, Bon Appétit, The Art of Eating, Gastronomica, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and Town & Country Travel to the Australian Financial Review, San Francisco Sunday Chronicle, Sunday Times of London, China Morning Post and Paris Notes. I've been contributing editor, European arts editor or Paris correspondent for Art & Antiques, Dorling-Kindersley Publications, Appellation: Wine Country Living, Departures and Salon.com.

My nonfiction books include the Irreverent Guide to Amsterdam; Enchanted Liguria: A Celebration of the Culture, Lifestyle and Food of the Italian Riviera; and the critically acclaimed Cooking the Roman Way: Authentic Recipes from the Home Cooks and Trattorias of Rome.

For a smaller serving, I'm anthologized in The Collected Traveler Paris, Southwest France and Italy; Salon.com's Wanderlust; Travelers' Tales: Adventures in Wine Country; Saveur Cooks Authentic French and Italian; Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, the best-selling Secrets of the Code and Secrets of Angels & Demons, and the upcoming By The Seat of My Pants. I'm also the author of a quirky crime novel, La Tour de l'Immonde, published in Paris.

Alison Harris
I've lived in the Marais for thirty years, with a four-year American sojourn in the 1970s. When I'm not shooting portraits, food and travel stories for American and European magazines, or taking photographs for books like Marcella Hazan's Marcella Cucina, Sophia Loren's Recipes & Memories, and Anne Willan's The Good Cook (not to mention my husband's books on the Italian Riviera and Rome), I'm on the streets of Paris with my battered but unbeatable old Olympus cameras, trying to give a new spin to beloved visual clichés.


from the Foreword by Diane Johnson