Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, based in Paris since 2002. Her latest book, Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, will be published in paperback in March 2026. In 2025, it was named an Economist best book of the year, a Smithsonian Magazine best travel book, a New York Observer best art book, and a Library Journal best book of the year.

Sciolino has been decorated Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor of the French state, for her “special contribution” to the friendship between France and the United States. 

 Xavier Salomon, former chief curator of the Frick Collection, called Adventures in the Louvre “essential reading for anyone visiting the Louvre — for those who already know it inside out and for those who have never been.” Vogue wrote that Sciolino “cracked the Louvre’s armor – and fell in love with the museum in the process.” Travel writer Rick Steves said that she discovered “new ways to enjoy the massive Louvre… its romance and even its secrets.” NPR’s Scott Simon described the book as “delightful.”

Sciolino’s previous book, The Seine: The River That Made Paris, published in 2019, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and a Barnes & Noble nonfiction book-of-the-month selection. A review in The New York Times called Sciolino “a graceful, companionable writer, someone who speaks about France in the most enjoyably American way.”  

Before that, The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs, published in 2015, was a New York Times bestseller. The New York Times wrote that “she has Paris at her feet.” 

Since 2019, Sciolino has been a member of the Executive Committee of Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based international advocacy organization promoting freedom of information and freedom of the press. 

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 Princeton’s Advisory Councils for both the French and Italian Departments and the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies.

 In 2015, she was the expert lecturer on the first New York Times-led tour to Iran; she led five subsequent tours to Iran before the initiative ended. She also served as an expert lecturer on several New York Times-led tours to Provence.  

Sciolino’s book, La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life, published in 2011, 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, published in 2000 and updated in 2005, 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. 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. 

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. 

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

Sciolino began her journalism career as a researcher at Newsweek Magazine in New York, later becoming national correspondent in Chicago, foreign correspondent in Paris, bureau chief in Rome, and roving international correspondent. Sciolino was the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1982-1983, the first woman to receive that honor. 

She joined The New York Times in 1984, where she held several posts, including United Nations’ bureau chief, Central Intelligence Agency correspondent, culture correspondent, chief diplomatic correspondent (the first woman to hold that post), and Paris Bureau Chief. She also served as The New York Times’ European investigative correspondent with responsibility for coverage of terrorism in Europe and Iran’s nuclear program. 

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 director’s guest in writing at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy.   

 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 doctoral 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. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sciolino lives in Paris with her husband, Andrew Plump, an attorney specializing in international arbitration at the Linklaters law firm. They have two daughters, Alessandra and Gabriela Plump.