Joie Davidow is an author and editor best known as co-founder of L.A. Weekly and L.A. Style magazines, and for her memoir Marked for Life. Davidow was born in Philadelphia, United States, to a Romanian mother and Russian father, and grew up in New Jersey. She was one of the founders of the L.A. Weekly, a newspaper published in Los Angeles since December, 1978. In 1985 she launched the monthly magazine L.A. Style, covering topics from fashion, interior design and architecture to food and travel. Davidow is the author of Marked for Life, a memoir about living with a facial port wine stain. With Esmeralda Santiago, she edited two story anthologies, Las Mamis and Las Christmas. She is also the author of Infusions of Healing: A Treasury of Mexican-American Healing". She was a founder and editor of a weekly online magazine, "In Rome Now: Beyond the Guidebooks", and makes her home in Rome, Italy, where she continues to write and teach.
Early life
Davidow grew up in the small town of Millville, New Jersey, to a Jewish family. Both of her parents were lawyers. She has two siblings, Jacqueline and Julianne Davidow. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in music, then earned a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory. Aspiring to be an opera singer, she went to Rome, Italy to study with Maestro Luigi Ricci, at that time in his 90s, who was a coach at the Opera di Roma when Puccini premiered his operas there. She began a relationship with light and video artistRudi Stern, and co-founded the video cooperative Global Village in New York City. The group took to the streets with the first portable video cameras, documenting political protests and speeches which were not being covered by the three major television networks of the time. She also taught video production at with the Global Village team through the New School.
Los Angeles
After her relationship with Stern, Davidow moved to Los Angeles, where she co-founded the alternative weekly newspaper, L.A. Weekly, with Jay Levin, a former investigative reporter for the New York Post whom she had known in New York. In 1985, on the heels of the success of the L.A. Weekly, she founded a spin-off magazine, L.A. Style, chronicling the aesthetic of Los Angeles. In 1988, L.A.Style was sold to American Express Publishing. Unhappy with the corporate conversion of what had been an independent publication, Davidow resigned her position as executive publisher and editor-in-chief in January, 1992. The magazine folded nine months later. In 1995, with colleague Eileen Rosaly, Davidow founded Sí magazine, catering to English-speaking Americans of Latino descent. However, major advertisers remained unconvinced that the Latino market was significant, and the magazine folded in 1997. Davidow subsequently teamed with Esmeralda Santiago to edit two volumes of memoir, Las Christmas: Favorite Latino Authors Share Their Holiday Memories and Las Mamis: Favorite Latino Authors Remember their Mothers, featuring the work of the many authors who were featured in Sí magazine.
Rome
Davidow spent part 2000–2001 in Rome, Italy, completing her own memoir, Marked for Life, which was published by Harmony in 2003. In 2005, she moved to Rome, where, with colleague Vikki Ericks, she founded the weekly online magazine InRomeNow.com. In 2008 she published a short novel, I Wouldn't Leave Rome to Go to Heaven. She currently teaches creative workshops in Rome, edits other writers's work, and is a writing coach and Italian-English translator.
Books
Joie Davidow, I Wouldn't Leave Rome to Go to Heaven 2008
Joie Davidow, Marked for Life, Harmony 2003,
Esmeralda Santiago and Joie Davidow, Las Mamis, Knopf 2000,
Joie Davidow, Infusions of Healing, Fireside 1999,
Esmeralda Santiago and Joie Davidow, Las Christmas, Knopf 1998,
