Bio

After practicing law for many years in Houston, Texas, Pamela Binnings Ewen exchanged her partnership in the law firm of BakerBotts, L.L.P. for writing. She lives near New Orleans, Louisiana. Her latest book, released in April 2020, The Queen of Paris, a novel on Coco Chanel, received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly and was ranked No. 1 in Hot New Spring Releases in historical fiction by Amazon Kindle. This is the explosive story of Chanel’s newly revealed secret life during the Nazi occupation of Paris in WWII.

Pamela is also the author of The Moon in the Mango Tree, awarded the 2012 Eudora Welty Memorial Award by the National League of American Pen Women, as well as a trilogy of novels on young women lawyers in New Orleans in the 1970’s—including Dancing on Glass, Chasing the Wind, and An Accidental Life. She also authored the Secret of the Shroud, and a non-fiction book, Faith on Trial, both now in second editions.

While practicing law Pamela served on the board of directors of Inprint, Inc., a non-profit organization supporting the literary arts in Houston, Texas, as well as on the Board of Directors of Junior Achievement in Houston. After retiring and moving to the New Orleans area, Pamela served on the board of directors of the New Orleans Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, The Tennessee Williams Festival, and as President of The Northshore Literary Society. In 2009 Pamela received the St. Tammany Parish President’s Arts Award as Literary Artist of the Year. Recently, Pamela was recognized by Marquis Who’s Who for Excellence in Law and Literature.

Pamela is the latest writer to emerge from a Louisiana Family recognized for its statistically improbable number of writers. Cousin, James Lee Burke, (the Dave Robichaux books) and a winner of the Edgar Award, wrote about the common ancestral grandfathers in his Civil War novel White Dove at Morning. Among other authors in the family are Andre Dubus II (The Bedroom), Andre Dubus III, The House of Sand and Fog) Elizabeth Nell Dubus (the Cajun trilogy), and Alafair Burke (the Samantha Kincaid mystery series).