About William Middleton
The first biography of Dominique and John de Menil is being written by William Middleton, a journalist and editor with two decades of experience in New York and Paris. Mr. Middleton has been the Fashion Features Director for Harper’s Bazaar and the Paris Bureau Chief for Fairchild Publications, overseeing W Magazine and WWD. He has written for the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, House & Garden, Esquire, Texas Monthly, Travel & Leisure, Departures and the International Herald Tribune. Subjects have ranged from the battle between Sotheby’s and Christie’s in Paris (“C’est la Guerre,” W, January 1998) to creative London couple Bella Freud and James Fox (“Social Studies,” Bazaar, January 2000) to the preservation of the de Menil home (“The House That Rattled Texas Windows,” the New York Times, June 3, 2004). Two years ago, Middleton moved from New York to Houston to be closer to archival sources, interview subjects and the city that was so important to the de Menils.
Middleton will be writing this biography for Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House; he will be working with Shelley Wanger, an editor whose recent works have won the Pulitzer Prize (De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan) and the National Book Award (The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion).