About Annik LaFarge 

Annik_LaFarge

Annik LaFarge is a writer, editor, photographer and lecturer. She is the author most recently of Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions, published by Simon & Schuster in 2020The companion music site is here. 


She is also the author of On the High Linepublished in 2012 and 2014 by Thames & Hudson and winner of the IPPY award for Travel Guidebook. A fully updated & revised 3rd edition will be published by Fordham University Press / Empire State Editions in May 2024. The companion website — which has more than 650 photographs, including historic, contemporary, aerial and rooftop — is at HighLineBook.com. Since 2009 she has been writing a blog about the High Line and its role in sparking innovative, urban placemaking around the world, at LivinTheHighLine.com. In 2019 it was selected by the Columbia University Libraries Web Resources Collection Program for inclusion in the Avery Library Historic Preservation and Urban Planning web archive, which ensures its continuing availability to researchers. 

LaFarge spent 25 years in the book business, beginning as a publicist, and in 1990 launched and ran Random House Large Print, the first industry initiative to publish simultaneous large print editions of major releases. She went on to become vice president and associate publisher at two Random House imprints (Times Books and Villard) and later Simon & Schuster. She was a senior editor at Crown and publishing director at Bloomsbury USA. During those years she was part of the senior management team that oversaw the imprint's marketing and publishing plans and worked with many authors including Marcus Buckingham, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Mary Higgins Clark, Jackie Collins, Jeffery Deaver, Pete Dexter, E.L. Doctorow, Eve Ensler, George Foreman, Jon Krakauer, Bill McKibben, George McGovern, The Motley Fool, James Michener, Gore Vidal, Vikram Seth, Ben Schott, Neil Sheehan, and Daniel Silva. She was also involved in the early efforts to create eBooks and develop strategies for digital publishing.

As an editor LaFarge acquired and edited non-fiction books by Roy Blount, Jr. (Feet on the Street), Max Brooks (The Zombie Survival Guide), Neenah Ellis (If I Live to be 100: Lessons From the Centenarians), Robert Frank (Richistan), Katie Hafner (A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest to Find the Perfect Piano), Scott Huler (Defining the Wind), Marc Gunther (Faith and Fortune), Garry Kasparov (How Chess Imitates Life), numerous books with The Onion, Nando Parrado (Miracle in the Andes), Mo Rocca (All The President's Pets), Amy Krouse Rosenthal (Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life), Emily Rapp (Poster Child), Charles Schwab (Charles Schwabs Guide to Financial Independence), Jane Stern (Ambulance Girl), Kara Swisher (There Must Be a Pony in There Somewhere), Bark magazine (Dog is My Co-Pilot, Howl), Benjamin Wallace (The Billionaire's Vinegar), and the distinguished gentlemen who wrote the classic I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You. 

In the late 1990s, at the height of the dot-com boom, she took a year away from publishing to join entrepreneur/journalist Steven Brill in the development and launch of Contentville.com, where she published an original series of eBooks and oversaw the website's bookstore.

In 2008 LaFarge left publishing to start her own consultancy, Title TK Projects, working as a non-fiction editor and writing collaborator and doing project management for author websites, e-commerce sites, blogs and enhanced eBooks. Clients included Mitch Albom, Mireille Guiliano, Jim Jubak and Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (The Dressmaker of Khair Khan and Ashley’s War).

Annik LaFarge is a native New Yorker who most recently lived in a loft just above the High Line in West Chelsea. She lectures frequently on the High Line and its impact around the world. She also developed a lecture about the music of Frédéric Chopin and the spirit of Romantic landscapes. To discuss a speaking engagement please use the contact form

LaFarge has written for the New York TimesBark magazine, the website for the Library of Congress, Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly, among other publications. Her photography has been widely published in print and online publications and been licensed for commercial use. She serves as chair of the Board of the Trustees of the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

One parting word: the family is not related to the Lafarge Cement comany. Or to the woman who knits in A Tale of Two Cities (that's Defarge).

Contact Annik LaFarge by using the contact form at WhyChopin.com: https://whychopin.com/about-this-website/contact/  

       © Annik LaFarge 2010 - 2024 | contact | Chasing Chopin: The Companion Music Site