laire Berlinski was born in 1968 in California. She grew up in New York, Seattle and California, and then studied at Balliol College of Oxford University, where she took her undergraduate degree in Modern History and her doctorate in International Relations. She has since lived and worked in Britain, France, Thailand and Laos as a journalist, academic and consultant. She has written for the Oxford International Review, Asia Times, Manager Magazine, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and numerous literary anthologies and scholarly collections. She now lives in Paris.