Beth Arnold is a journalist and award-winning writer, living in Paris, who has written for such print venues as Rolling Stone, GQ, InStyle, Self, American Way, Premiere, and Mirabella. Online, besides her regular blogging for The Huffington Post (where she now produces the “Letter From Paris” branded column and podcasts), Arnold has also written for Salon.com and Vogue.com. Her prime journalistic topics are politics, culture, people, and travel.

Arnold has been interviewed on Air America, and her online commentary has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, The Hotline, Der Spiegel, BuzzFlash, The Satirical Political Report, Daily Kos, AlterNet, Democratic Underground, PoynterOnline, and USA Today Online. During its coverage of President Obama’s inauguration, BET (Black Entertainment Television) used Arnold’s video of election night in Paris.

Her work has also been recognized by her peers for its excellence: During the presidential campaign, www.betharnold.com was named “Political Blog of the Week” on Blog Catalog. Arnold was also included in one of the most prestigious books on the whole blogging phenomenon, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging (Simon & Schuster, 2008).

While Arnold has wholeheartedly made the leap to New Media, she also continues to write for print. In 2007, she contributed a chapter on Living in France to the book Retirement Without Borders (Scribner, 2008). At present, she’s putting the finishing touches on a nonfiction book called Picking the Bones, a memoir about family, identity, and loss. And she’s organizing her blogs from the website www.chasingmatisse.com (written in 2002-2003 to chronicle her and her husband’s great adventure of selling their house in Arkansas, putting everything in storage, and uprooting themselves to France) into a book she calls Jours of Our Lives.

You can connect with Beth Arnold and read her work, both journalistic and creative, by clicking on the following sites:

Website: www.betharnold.com
Facebook: Beth Arnold
LinkedIn: Beth Arnold
YouTube: BethArnold1
MySpace: MySpace.com/betharnold1

To get more scoop on the move to France, go to: www.chasingmatisse.com.


And, for those who want a little more info:

In a previous life, Beth Arnold earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) and was a therapist in a community mental health center as well as a consultant. Democratic politics were an essential part of her childhood home training and family life. She received more of her political education on Capitol Hill--where she worked for the late Arkansas Senator John McClellan during Watergate--and from her uncle, who was a powerful Washington lobbyist.

Arnold was a finalist for a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe (for a novel) and a semi-finalist for a Nicholl Fellowship (screenplay) through the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She produced the website for her husband’s book Chasing Matisse, for which she was an early blogger recording her point of view of their journey across France chasing art, artists, a creative life, and a fresh way to see the world.

She is wild about Paris but misses Target and her two terrific daughters. Ah, but thanks to Skype video, they're just a screen away.







Blog Entries by Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Apple Mania!

1 Comments | Posted November 9, 2009 | 03:15 PM (EST)


Hallelujah! Three years ago, I was transformed. I was sick and tired of all the problems I was having with my umpteenth PC, and slowly, over time, several friends finally convinced me to try a Mac. I went to San Francisco for the holidays and went up to the spirit...

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Letter From Paris: Let the Saints Come Marching In

3 Comments | Posted October 31, 2009 | 02:17 PM (EST)


This week has been unsettling for both the Lone Wolf husband and me. I may be an antennae that picks up the energy of people all around me while he spends more time ignoring them, but we've both been distracted by "interesting" things that have been happening to our daughters...

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Letter From Paris: The Little Black Dress in the Palais Royal

Posted October 21, 2009 | 03:24 PM (EST)


I can't think of any better place than the Palais Royal to have an exhibition for the ever chic little black dress. And that's just what you'll currently find if you walk down the rue de Montpensier arcade of the former palace of Cardinal Richelieu. You remember the...

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Letter From Paris: Art Market Buzz

1 Comments | Posted October 9, 2009 | 10:09 AM (EST)


By guest columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts

Note from Beth Arnold: My friend Paul told me this fascinating story about something that had happened at an art auction recently, and I asked him to write about it and use my blog as...

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Letter From Paris: An Appalachian Artist

Posted October 6, 2009 | 03:05 AM (EST)


He grew up near Hazard, Kentucky, not far from where my grandmother, Anna Wells, dug coal out of the mountain as a child to heat her home. Where she walked across the holler to go to school when there were no roads. His family's blood is also like part...

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Letter From Paris: The Sound of American Outrage

50 Comments | Posted October 2, 2009 | 04:20 PM (EST)


Listening to this roaring American furor over Roman Polanski needing to get what he deserves reminds me of the enormous public outcry about Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" on the Super Bowl halftime show a few years ago. Ohmygod, Americans caught a glimpse of a bare breast. The horror...the horror...

There...

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Letter From Paris: What The French Don't Understand About Us (And I Don't Either)

12 Comments | Posted September 25, 2009 | 11:22 AM (EST)


I am reading Janet Flanner's Paris Journal 1944-55. She is a luminary to some, including me, for the "Letter From Paris" column she wrote (under the name Genêt) for The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until 1975. I aspire to be a variation on her writer-journalist theme in...

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Letter from Paris: Josephine Baker Back in Paris (This Time as a Man)

1 Comments | Posted September 11, 2009 | 02:34 PM (EST)


If you can get away for a day or so, it might be a good plan to fly to Paris and spend the evening at Josephine Baker's new Casino show. You would have plenty to think about on the return trip, for the revue contains something of everything...."

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Letter From Paris: Books with French Twists

6 Comments | Posted September 4, 2009 | 09:04 AM (EST)


There are genres of literature I call "Life in Paris or France" and "Adventures in France." These books are usually fun reads that allow Francophiles to dream their dreams of living in the land of luscious patisseries and Winged Victory--or give readers the space to imagine fulfilling their own...

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Ted Kennedy: A Whole Human Being

3 Comments | Posted August 28, 2009 | 01:30 PM (EST)


Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy passed on, and the world woke from its lethargy and paid attention. Homage is being paid to Kennedy across the globe, from Ireland to Bangladesh. But while the good senator from Massachusetts is silent and still, lying in repose in brother President...

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My Father's Voice

1 Comments | Posted August 16, 2009 | 06:13 PM (EST)


My father, W.J. "Bill" Arnold, died 40 years ago today. This is in honor and in memory of him.


I hadn't heard my father's voice in almost 30 years -- until today, when I played an old tape recording. The pace dragged, and the sound quality was scratchy,...

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Healing America (and What One Man Is Doing)

5 Comments | Posted August 14, 2009 | 01:21 PM (EST)


In this new wave of uninformed mass hysteria that conservative forces are whipping up, American citizens are again being led down a twisted garden path. And this time it's about an issue that every single American should support -- the reform of the health care system. I look across the...

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Need a Dose of Nature? An Exotic Spa? Try Wildfitness in Kenya

Posted August 7, 2009 | 12:30 PM (EST)


We took off our running shoes and walked barefooted along the path, which included the bed of a clear stream of water that I would call a creek. Smiling women in colorful dresses, balancing bundles on their heads, and men and giggling children met us along this liquid footpath. The...

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Letter From Paris: Other Conversations Coming Out of Iran

3 Comments | Posted June 25, 2009 | 05:09 PM (EST)


With the crises in the world over the last year or so--the attacks in Mumbai, the cyclone in Burma, protest in Tibet, and now the Iranian elections--information has been reported fast and furiously by everyone with a device to do so. Were the facts accurate? Yes/no/sometimes. At the very least,...

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Letter From Paris: Help Find an Iranian Photographer!

Posted June 24, 2009 | 04:31 PM (EST)


This comment was posted on my blog--www.betharnold.com--yesterday by a friend who is missing a friend--a photographer recording the protests in Tehran. If anyone can help find him, please do what you can! We all need to stand with the Iranian people who need our support--in whatever way possible.

...
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Letter From Paris: Yes, We Ca(e)n! In Normandy

7 Comments | Posted June 6, 2009 | 08:32 AM (EST)


The Obamas are in France -- a land that loves and admires them, individually and as a couple, for their intelligence, philosophies, and, let's not forget, potent style. Barack and Michelle and the First Couple of France Nicolas and Carla (Bruni) Sarkozy are walking the streets of Normandy,...

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Letter From Paris: Calling A Dick A Dick

4 Comments | Posted June 1, 2009 | 01:39 PM (EST)


With yet another round of Dick Cheney disinformation saturating the airwaves, it boggles the mind how the Bush administration controlled the American conversation in the media for so many years. As the public was pounded with fear and loathing of the rest of the world--during the lead-up to the...

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Letter From Paris: Christian Lacroix, We Love You

4 Comments | Posted May 29, 2009 | 06:46 PM (EST)


It was with great sadness we read that the fashion house of Christian Lacroix filed for court protection from creditors -- bankruptcy -- yesterday. I had actually been tipped of the dismal news last week, so I wasn't surprised -- but sorry that this extraordinary man whose fashions we lusted...

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Letter From Paris: Burma -- Aung San Suu Kyi Goes on Trial in Prison

7 Comments | Posted May 18, 2009 | 09:14 AM (EST)


Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi goes on trial in prison today in Burma. What does this mean for us as Americans and citizens of the world? In my opinion, this courageous leader and the Burmese people need our support in their fight for freedom and democracy. Here is...

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Letter From Paris: Travels with My Daughter

Posted May 8, 2009 | 12:47 PM (EST)


The rain fell softly as I wound around the tight curves of Highway One, heading north of San Francisco. My daughter Blair and I had left Tony's Seafood Restaurant in Marshall, California--an atmospheric old seafood shack with pine-paneled dining room sitting over the quietly lapping water--to make the swervy...

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