Tilar J. Mazzeo

Tilar J. Mazzeo is a cultural historian and writer of biographies and historical non-fiction. She is the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College in Maine.

Mazzeo was born in Port Charlotte, Florida in 1971, and largely grew up in Rockport, Maine. She attended Camden-Rockport High School until 1989. She studied English and Classical Greek (double major) for her undergraduate degree and later completed her PhD in English Literature and in the Program in Theory and Criticism from the University of Washington in Seattle in 1999.

Mazzeo is married to Dr. Robert Miles, a Canadian professor of English. Mazzeo divides her time among coastal Maine, New York City, and Saanichton, British Columbia, where she lives with her husband.

Mazzeo has held previous teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Oregon State University, and the University of Washington. She was the Jenny McKeon Moore Writer in Residence in the Creative Writing and English program at the George Washington University from 2010-2011. She was the Washington Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK in the late 1990s. She is the editor of digital scholarly editions at Romantic Circles and has been featured as a preeminent teacher of creative nonfiction with the Teaching Company / Great Courses.

Her book The Widow Clicquot, a biography of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, the eponymous founder of the champagne house Veuve Clicquot was published in 2008 by Harper Collins. It became a New York Times bestseller. A film adaption of the book was announced by Variety to be directed by Taylor Hackford.

In 2010 Mazzeo's book The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Biography of a Scent. was published.

In 2007 she released her book Plagiarism and Literary property in the Romantic Period which was reviewed in the New York Times.

In 2014 Mazzeo's book, The Hotel on Place Vendôme, the story of the Ritz Hotel in Paris during Nazi occupation, was released. It became a New York Times bestseller in travel writing and was a Los Angeles Times bestseller for more than 20 weeks.

In 2016 Mazzeo published Irena's Children, the story of Polish social worker Irena Sendler, whose efforts prevented the death of thousands of Jewish children during World War II.

In 2016, Publisher's Weekly announced that Mazzeo is completing a forthcoming biography of Eliza Hamilton, the wife of Alexander Hamilton.

Mazzeo's work as a wine writer has appeared in numerous national outlets in the United States, including Food and Wine magazine, Mental Floss, and in the wine guides of which she is the author The Back Lane Wineries of Napa and The Back

Lane Wineries of Sonoma (Ten Speed Press).