Ian Ayres, founder and editor of Van Gogh's Ear, began writing poetry at puberty in houses of ill fame. In 1982, Leona Helmsley fired him from his desk clerk job at Helmsley Palace (New York City) for writing a poem on the back of Elizabeth Taylor's autograph in the hotel's celebrity guestbook. Since then, his poems and short stories have appeared internationally in hundreds of publications. Ayres moved from the U.S.A. to France in 1989 and, ten years later, along with Eric Ellena, created the movie production company French Connection Films, for which he directed the recent biography documentary Tony Curtis: Driven to Stardom. Ayres' new memoir, Private Parts: The Early Works of Ian Ayres (French Connection Press, 2012) has just been released.