Alba has been writing books for thirty years. She started doing so in French, as she grew up in Paris, then moved to America, switched to English for her prose and never looked back. She lived in Greenwich Village where she published her first short stories, rented a piano with a missing C, wrote songs she sang to herself , and decided that New York was the answer to everything. After earning a Masters degree at Columbia University where she finished her first novel, ‘Muse,’ she decided that New York was not the answer to everything after all and left for the UK, which became her home. Her novel and those short stories, a collection entitled ‘Walking on Ice,’ were both subsequently published by Macmillan.
In between fiction, she wrote about art for various magazines, including the Journal of Art and Antiques and New Art, translated poets from French to English for the Other Press - and more obscure publications which no longer exist - and wrote profiles of famous couturiers and sculptors, Duro Olowu, Christian Astuguevieille among others, for Couture Lab, a high-end fashion website.
She also helped edit a few books, wrote articles for Tatler magazine, had two children and began writing a memoir about her bohemian childhood in Paris, entitled ‘Major/Minor’ which got published in 2012, by Quartet Books. It was endorsed by writers such as Paul Auster, John Banville and Edmund de Waal, translated into German and Italian, shortlisted for the Spear’s Awards, and selected among ‘the best books of 2012’ by the New Yorker. It was made into a short documentary by Arte TV, who followed her around her Parisian haunts, including the swings of the Luxembourg Gardens, and cafés in St Germain des Près where much time was spent reminiscing.
She then turned back to song-writing, where she recorded a first CD of her songs, French poems set to music, followed by a second CD, ‘Dans les rues de Paris,’ with her own lyrics. She has performed in various clubs in New York, London and Paris including the Theatre de la Vieille Grille, the Pembury, as part of Jazz FM’s Jazz After Dark, and Book and Kitchen, in Notting Hill.
During that time she wrote a narrative poem, Soon, published by CB Editions, about what happens when you get stuck on the Eurostar, then set it to opera with her husband, composer Tom Smail. It was performed at the Riverside Studios, in London, in 2013. They’re now working on a new opera together, based on Major/Minor, to be directed by film veteran Hugh Hudson. She also started writing profiles of people and places for Spear’s magazine, and contributed essays, also about people and places, to Radio 4 - the latest one selected for Pick of the Week. One could argue that writing about the living has been Alba’s modus operandi when it comes to non-fiction, but there’ve been many dead characters in her fiction. She teaches about them in her creative writing Guardian masterclasses, has also done so at Columbia University, the Royal College of Art and the Chocolate Factory. Her new novel, ‘Where to find me,’ will be published by Alma Books, in the fall of 2018.