About Debra ollivier
Debra is the author of the national bestseller What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind (Penguin) and Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl (St. Martin's Press). She has been instrumental in ghostwriting, book doctoring, and editing over twenty titles, working collaboratively with authors on a broad and eclectic mix of subjects. Her editorial chops were honed as an Acquisitions Editor for Parallax Press (an independent publisher founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh), a Contributing Editor for Salon Magazine, and a Managing Editor for The Huffington Post, where she launched a vertical in tandem with actress/producer Rita Wilson. Her work is featured in the bestselling anthologies Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (Villard) and Because I Said So: 36 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves (Harper Perennial), as well as in Harper's Magazine, Playboy, The New York Times, Parents Magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, Le Monde and other media.
She was raised in Los Angeles by New Yorkers who headed west to seek their bliss and stopped in California when there was no more west left. Both parents were big in the human potential movement and happily partook in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Debra longed for a vanilla family but grew up with a Ben & Jerry’s experiment.
An obsessive journaler and book nerd at a young age, Debra graduated from UCLA and the Sorbonne with a degree in French literature. She worked as a freelance writer in France, where she became a dual citizen, had two kids, and wrote about French culture and the glorious vexations of parenting for over a decade.
Over the years Debra has had the good fortune of assisting in making several big ideas happen, including the launch of the first TED conference with Richard Wurman and the Social Venture Network. She offers a range of editorial services for authors, writers, and other makers and mavericks. She currently lives in Los Angeles and maintains close ties with France.
