Renate Stendhal is the award-winning author of the photo biography Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures. After growing up in Berlin and Hamburg, she lived in Paris for almost two decades, pursuing ballet and underground theater, translating American women authors and writing cultural reviews for the German radio and press. Stendhal has published several books in Germany and in the United States, three of them co-authored with her life companion Kim Chernin. Her articles and essays have appeared internationally. She has a passion for country living with Kim, two dogs, and a small orchard, and she still loves to opine about opera and ballet, reviewing culture for diverse magazines.