Joanne and Gerry Dryansky have been a couple since they were in high school together in Queens, N.Y. Joanne attended Queens College while Gerry took his bachelor’s degree. at Princeton. Together they went off to Boston, where Gerry studied at Harvard, with the ambition of becoming a scholar of English literature. Joanne began writing children’s stories, in a mode of reality later echoed in the Fatima novels, while working to pay for their existence. But the academic world seemed an unexciting place to both of them, and Gerry headed into a career of journalism after taking his master’s degree. Not long afterwards, they decided to spend a year in Europe, and have stayed on ever since. How long? “We no longer consult calendars,” they say, they are a rather deceptive and one-dimensional measure of the passing of time.” The creations that they hold most dear are a son, André and a daughter, Larisa, both born in Paris. The travel assignments that put them on the road together throughout Europe wind up as Gerry’s stories in Condé Nast Traveler, for whom he is Senior European Correspondent. Picture © Jerry Bauer