Updates on some of your favourite columnists and editors!
LOUISE DE LA PAUMARDIERE (LOULOU)
If Louise de la Paumardiere needs no introduction—French President and intimate friend Nicolas Sarkozy has described her as “everything that is great about France in a five-foot four-inch bottle of pure aqua regia,” and Michelle Obama recently called her “a chainsaw without the scruples”—“it might not be entirely premature,” she told us in a recent phone interview, “to start tweaking a eulogy.” Indeed, as she described her life over the past year and a half (“nothing but coked-up hos, bitch-slapping arms smugglers and pedocriminals in douche suits”), we instantly guessed, as anyone would have, that she’s been dividing her time among the French presidential palace, the White House and friend Roman Polanski’s adorable Gstaad chalet.
Loulou, who is on paid leave from the magazine, is extending her sabbatical in order to finish Without Anesthetic, the kill-and-tell novel-cum-memoir that grew out of her “60, rue de Varenne: Postcard from Paris” column. Still fascinated that children-for-sex markets should operate so openly in France and elsewhere , she tells us that her book has been richly fueled by the many unguarded comments made by her hosts’ distinguished visitors (French minister of culture Frederic Mitterrand’s account of drugging, torturing and eating an eight-year-old Burundi girl at the ministerial residence in Paris is, says Loulou, but one of the book’s many highlights).
Loulou tells us that she would also like to take this occasion to apologize publicly to the Air France pilot on the June 6, 2010, NY-Paris flight 023 for the drunken kiss as she disembarked, and, finally, to pay tribute to her personal assistant, Patrick, “without whose help my book would have been finished months ago.”
MEREDITH DIAS
Meredith is a freelance writer and editor. She works as the research editor of the Editors Only and STRAT newsletters (http://editorsonly.com and http://stratnewsletter.com) and has recently put her evil superpowers to use as a book reviewer. You can read her book reviews at http://meredithdias.com and follow her on Twitter (@meredithdias).
EMMA ROWLEY
What have I been doing with my time? Well, I am very glad you asked. Contrary to the scurrilous rumours making their way around the science community, my recent activities have had nothing to do with a medium-security correctional facility in Ohio. No, indeed. In fact, I have been pursuing a wide range of healthful and career-enhancing activities, from stamping license plates, to sewing burlap sacks, to making 'shivs' from sharpened toothbrushes. I'd also like to take this opportunity to state that the teething problems with the Large Hadron Collider in 2008 had nothing to do with my desire to test a theory about the consequences of putting a donut into the world's largest particle accelerator. Also, for the record, I do not steal cats and even if I did, I would never dress them up like Victorian street urchins.
In real-life, Emma is now the editor of www.indiemoviesonline.com and wants to thank Sharon for letting her unleash her highly unscientific alter-ego on such a fantastic site and to the fab HW readers for not inundating Sharon with complaints. Happy ten year anniversary, Happy Woman!
SUSAN SHOEMAKER
Susan still hasn't found her car keys which isn't a problem because she can't remember where she parked her car so couldn't use them anyway.
She wrote a weekly humor column for a newspaper until 2009 when the industry tanked and continues to insist it was not her fault. Since then she has written a delightful collection of short stories for which she now has an agent and as soon as she has a publisher she will let you know and ask you to buy many copies of her book so she can get on the best-seller list and become fabulously wealthy.
JULIE WARD
