Elizabeth Guider

I am a longtime entertainment journalist and more recently a novelist who has worked in Rome, Paris and London as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Born in the South, I hold a doctorate in Renaissance Studies from New York University. During the late 1970s I was based in Rome where I taught English and American literature, got involved in the heady politics of the place, and where much of the action of my first novel, The Passionate Palazzo, takes place. While living in Europe, I also worked as a reporter for the showbiz newspaper Variety, focusing on the film business, television and theater. I traveled widely, reporting on the politics affecting media from Eastern Europe to Hong Kong as well as covering festivals and trade shows in Cannes, Monte Carlo, Venice, Berlin, Prague and Moscow. Back in the States since the early 1990s, I specialized on the burgeoning TV industry and eventually held top editor positions at Variety and latterly at The Hollywood Reporter. Most recently, I have freelanced for World Screen News as senior contributing editor. I divide my time between Los Angeles and Vicksburg, MS where I grew up, and which is the setting for my second novel, about an interracial affair set post WWI and titled Milk and Honey on the Other Side. My first novel, My third work, called Connections, focuses on three generations of women as they grapple with their personal demons, confront professional challenges, and fumble their way to lasting relationships. My fourth, Our Long Love's Day, centers on academia, specifically a married couple of professors whose marriage unravels--in the first chapter--and sends ripples throughout their circle until they each finally find new and unexpectedly enriching relationships. Set on California's Central Coast, my fifth book concentrates on a widowed lawyer who is pursued by three intriguing women. The pandemic plays a role as do three very interesting dogs--and an equally charming cat! Oh, and lots of scrumptious dishes are cooked up. It came out in November 2022. My sixth novel is a love story set mostly on the home front during the Second World War, mostly in New Orleans. This Nearly Was Ours is more historical fiction than romance and focuses on the lives of two young women who come of age in that period. One of them falls in love with a Jewish-German refugee and the other with a Naval officer in the Pacific. It was published in October 2024. To further my enjoyment and extend my range as a writer, I try to read widely, everything from contemporary novels -- think Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Kristin Hannah, Annie Erneux, Elena Ferrante, Donna Tartt, Denis Lehane, Amos Towle, Alice Hoffman and Ann Patchett--but also nonfiction. Of late that has meant Yuval Harari (Sapiens), Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction), Mary Beard (SPQR), Ian Morris (Why the West Still Rules), Salmon Rushdie (Knife), Walter Isaacson (The Code Breaker), and Irene Vallejo (Papyrus).