Alev Croutier

Alev Lytle Croutier (born February 14, 1944), known in Turkey as Alev Aksoy Croutier, (born Izmir, Turkey) is a writer based in San Francisco, US. Her books have been translated into 22 languages. She is the author of the non-fiction books Harem: the World behind the Veil and Taking the Waters and the novels The Palace of Tears,Seven Houses, and The Third Woman.

Croutier studied Comparative Literature at Robert College in Istanbul, and left Turkey at the age of 18 in 1963 to study Art History at Oberlin College in the US. She has taught at Dartmouth, Goddard, and San Francisco State University, and lectures at universities, museums, libraries, and conferences on Orientalism, Middle Eastern women, harems, and Turkey.

Croutier co-founded Mercury House publishing company in San Francisco in 1986 and worked as the executive editor for almost a decade.

Before becoming a writer, Croutier was a screenwriter and documentary filmmaker in Japan, Turkey, Europe, and the US, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the screenplay to the 1980 film Tell Me a Riddle based on Tillie Olsen's novella.

Her articles have appeared in literary and mainstream magazines, such as Art & Antiques, Harper’s, London Telegraph, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Gourmet, Le Monde, Die Woche, Focus, and Zyzzyva, as well as anthologies including Roots & Branches, Istanbul, I Should Have Stayed Home, and Food. She contributed to A Window over the Mediterranean for the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa among writers such as Amos Oz, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Max Gallo, Amin Malouf, and Luis Sepulveda.

Croutier has appeared in numerous radio and TV shows. She was a commentator for the Canadian Film Board series The Powder Room, the BBC’s Mozart in Turkey, and Channel 4's The Reign of Women, and Harem.

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