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 as well as three biographies: Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation, translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian and French; Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, 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, with Appetite for Life: the Biography of Julia Child.