Joie Davidow

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Biography

 

Joie Davidow is a the author of five nationally-published books, an editor and writing coach with more than three decades of professional experience. She is the author of Marked for Life, a memoir published by Harmony in June 2003, and Infusions of Healing, A Treasury of Mexican-American Herbal Remedies, published by Fireside/​Simon & Schuster in October 1999. ​With Esmeralda Santiago, she is the editor of two anthologies, Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Remember the Holidays, published by Alfred A. Knopf in November 1998, and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember Their Mothers, published by Knopf in April 2000. Her short novel, I Wouldn't Leave Rome to Go to Heaven, was published in 2008. An Unofficial Marriage, a novel about the relentless love of the author Ivan Turgenev for the prima donna Pauline Viardot, was  published by Arcade in March 2021. Anything But Yes, a novel set in 1749, based on the diary of an eighteen year-old girl who was seized at gunpoint from her home in the Rome Ghetto and carried off to a convent where she was relentlessly pressured to convert was published by Monkfish Books in October 2023. She is currently working on a second volume of memoir, centered on her life in New York's SoHo district in the 1970s, and chronicling the burgeoning aesthetic of Los Angeles in the 1980s.      .

She was a co-founder of the L.A. Weekly, a newspaper which has been an integral part of life in Los Angeles. She served as Vice-President and Director of L.A. Weekly, Inc., and was also an editor of the paper, developing its entertainment section and writing a popular "Style" column.  Subsequently, she founded L.A. Style, the ground-breaking magazine that chronicled the Los Angeles lifestyle, becoming the fastest growing regional magazine in the United States and winning numerous awards. After selling the magazine to American Express Publishing, she launched the award-winning  magazine, a national lifestyle publication, in English, catering to the Latino market.

 

Her frequent television appearances include such programs as the "Oprah Winfrey Show," "CBS This Morning,” CNN’s “Sonya Live” and many others. She has served as a consultant for such organizations as Weider Publications, Los Angeles magazine and others. Her feature articles have appeared in Metropolitan HomeTown & CountryTravel HolidayWestways, Spafinder and other publications. She has lectured on current trends and conducted seminars at UCLA and for companies such as Benetton, Nordstrom and the Men’s Fashion Association. She received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Upton Sinclair award, for her role in the founding of L.A. Weekly. She was named one of Publishing’s Most Dynamic Leaders by Folio:The Magazine for Magazine Management. ​ 

She lives in Umbria, Italy, with her dog Maggie.