Jennie Goutet

After spending twenty years, visiting and living in various countries, Jennie Goutet finally settled in France and began writing about it in her blog A Lady in France.

At first she wrote about life and construction in her small house, just outside of Paris. She wrote about her three young children, the French dishes she was cooking, the garden she was trying to tame. And then, bits and pieces of her past started appearing in the blog – living and traveling around Asia, her life as a single woman in Manhattan, the humanitarian work she and her husband were involved in while living in Somaliland, Kenya and Djibouti.

Going beyond blogging into writing a memoir was a direct result of suffering a second-term miscarriage. Suddenly there was a reason to write an entire book. A theme started to emerge, and it was the threads of grief, joy, and faith that were woven tightly throughout the years. Her first draft was finished the same month her baby would have been due.

Once she had published that book, the desire to continue writing longer works bit. A fan of the Regency period, she attempted a fictional romance, set in modern times, but with a soupçon of the Regency style. The Viscount of Maisons Laffitte appeared on her blog in a series of one chapter per week in an effort to put any doubts to rest (her own) that she could not complete such a project. Next she is considering taking the plunge and delving into the Regency period itself.

Jennie Goutet is the author of award-winning memoir A Lady in France, and blogs under the same name. She also wrote and illustrated the children’s book Happy People Everywhere, is a contributing author to Sunshine After the Storm, and That’s Paris – an Anthology of Love, Life and Sarcasm in Paris. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year pick three times, and her writing has appeared on Huffington Post, Queen Latifah’s website, Mamalode, BonBonBreak and BlogHer. She lives just outside of Paris with her husband and three children.

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