Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times based in Paris. Her latest book, Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, will be published in April 2025 by W.W. Norton & Company.

For the 2010-2011 academic year, Sciolino was a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. In the spring of 2014, she was a writing fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy.

In 2015 she served as the expert lecturer on the first New York Times-led tour to Iran and led six New York Times’ tours to Iran before the initiative ended. She also served as an expert lecturer on several New York Times-led tours to Provence.

In 2017, Sciolino taught as a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University’s Council of the Humanities, a post she held in 2010. She is a member of the Advisory Council of Princeton’s French and Italian Departments and its Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.

In Adventures in the Louvre, Elaine Sciolino takes it as her mission to show how anyone can forge an intimate connection with the museum. She demystifies the Louvre, introducing us to her favorite artworks, both legendary and overlooked, and to the people who are the museum’s lifeblood: the curators selecting and arranging the works, the artisans producing frames and engravings, the builders overseeing restorations, the firefighters protecting the aging structure. An irrepressible and charming travel companion, Sciolino reveals a Louvre filled with unexpected mysteries, delights, and frustrations. She also takes us beyond the building’s imposing walls to reveal an expansive side, from the Tuileries gardens next door to the satellite museums in the northern French city of Lens and in Abu Dhabi. Through Sciolino’s eyes, we encounter a museum that is an elusive and seductive object of desire for anyone who longs for the connection and inspiration that great art provides. With her by our side, we cannot help falling in love with the Louvre.

Sciolino's book The Seine: The River That Made Paris published in 2019, was a national bestseller. Edmund White of The New York Times called Sciolino "a graceful, companionable writer, someone who speaks about France in the most enjoyably American way."^[1]" David A. Bell, Professor of History at Princeton University, said, "Sciolino writes with the authority of a historian, the sleuthing skills of a journalist, and the voice of a storyteller eager to recount the tales of those who have been touched by the Seine."^[2]

That book followed, The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs, published in 2015, was a New York Times best seller. Kate Betts of The New York Times wrote that "she has Paris at her feet;^[3]" the Chicago Tribune called her "a storyteller at heart.”^[4]

Sciolino’s book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, was published in 2011. The book was named one of the best books of 2011 by The New York Times T Magazine.

Her book, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran, was published in 2000 and updated in a new edition in 2005. During the Persian Mirrors project, she received fellowships from the United States Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Open Society Institute. Persian Mirrors was awarded the 2001 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Overseas Press Club Cornelius Ryan Citation for nonfiction. It was also a History Book Club selection and a New York Times Notable Book for 2000.

Her first book, The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis, was published in 1991 and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

In 2001, Sciolino received the Distinguished Public Service Award and the Excellence in Journalism Award for “outstanding contributions to international affairs reporting and commentary” from the U.S. Secretary of State’s Open Forum Program. She was honored by Columbia University’s Encyclopedia Iranica project for “presenting the best of Iran to the world” and elected to the Executive Council of the Society for Iranian Studies that year.

Sciolino was decorated chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor of the French state, in 2010 for her “special contribution” to the friendship between France and the United States.

Born in Buffalo, New York, she graduated summa cum laude from Canisius College and received a master’s degree in French history from New York University. In 2018, she received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of London. She also holds honorary doctorate degrees from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Canisius College, and Dowling College. She is one of the only American members of Femmes Forum, a Paris-based private club of 200 of the leading women of France. Sciolino lives in Paris with her husband, Andrew Plump, an attorney at the Linklaters law firm. They have two daughters, Alessandra and Gabriela Plump.

• The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991. (hardcover) ASIN: B000AO4E3U (trade paperback) ISBN 0-471-54299-7 ISBN 978-0471542995. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
• Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran. New York: The Free Press, 2000. (Reissued edition, 2005) ISBN 0-7432-8479-8 ISBN 978-0743284790
• La Séduction: How the French Play the Game of Life. New York: Times Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8050-9115-1, ISBN 0-8050-9115-7
• The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. ISBN 978-0393242379, ISBN 0393242374
• La Dernière Rue de Paris : Enquête sur la rue des Martyrs. Exils, 2016. ISBN 9782912969774
• The Seine : the River that made Paris W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. ISBN 9780393609356

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• https://elainesciolino.com/about
• NPR
  • Weekend Edition interview with Sciolino on the French reaction to the Strauss-Kahn verdict, June 13, 2013.