Biography of Gabrielle Renoir-Large

Gabrielle Renoir-Large was born in rural southeastern Ohio only a few miles from Mark Spencer's childhood home. Like Mark, she became fascinated with Elvis Presley at a very early age. She remembers telling her mother, who was also a great fan of The King that she was going to marry a man "just like Elvis" when she grew up, but Gabrielle meant the Elvis of the 1950s, the same one her mother was so fond of. Like Mark, Gabrielle wrote her first short story when she was very young, but she then turned her attention to reading until she was in her teens when she entered, and won, an international poetry contest, writing in the sonnet form, one of the most difficult forms of poetry to master.

Gabrielle attended Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia as well as the Sorbonne in Paris, France, where she studied drama and French.

Gabrielle studied screenwriting in Hollywood with Donna Lee and Syd Field, the author of the best selling book, Screenplay, the preeminent guide to screenwriting. Working under Mr. Field's direction, Gabrielle served as a reader and script consultant for both 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures and has been involved in "page one rewrites" for more than two hundred screenplays, including some major motion pictures.

While living in Europe, Gabrielle was involved in the writing and translation of many opera librettos, writing primarily in French and translating from Italian to German. Opera is one of Gabrielle's passions and this was a "dream job" for her. "I didn't even consider it a ‘real’ job," she says, "though I was paid and paid well. I just loved the work—and opera in general so much—I would have done the work for free just to be involved in something I love." During that same time period, she also translated several books from German to English, mostly non-fiction.

Later, Gabrielle wrote the novel, The Real Thing: A Story of Sex, Sapphires, and Second Chances under the pen name of "Lily Remy." Being an impatient person, and knowing full well that comedic crime capers were "out of fashion" at the time, and the book wouldn't sell without a "big name" behind it, Gabrielle self-published the book as gifts for her friends and family, a decision she does not regret. "It was the most wonderful learning experience possible, it was so much fun, and it was exactly what I wanted to write at the time I wrote it," she says. "Since then, my focus and my direction, as well as my level of sophistication, have changed, and all for the better, as they should. I was a very young writer when I wrote The Real Thing. Since that time, I've matured and so has my work."

Today, with many more writing classes and a lot more actual writing behind her, Gabrielle concentrates on novels, short stories, and poetry. "I'm enjoying the transition," she says, "from commercial work for the screen to the more literary novel and short story. I'm really devoting a lot of time to poetry now. And I'd love to work on another opera again some day soon." Gabrielle, who loves the outdoors, lives with her husband, Sebastien Large and their family in the US. However, she's a "total summer person" and she and her family are planning a move back to the south of France, on a part-time basis, in the not-too-distant future.