During World War II, she joined the Resistance, and in 1944 she was sent by the Ministry of Information to Switzerland. After the war, she lived in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Saint-Paul-de-Vence. She published her first novel, The Parade of the wicked, in 1946.
In 1951, she participated in the founding of the literary magazine Roman, with Pierre de Lescure [fr], published in St. Paul de Vence. She moved to Paris in 1953, when she won the Prix Renaudot for The Last Innocence.
In 1967, Celia Bertin was invited to be a writer-in-residence at Tufts University in Boston, where she wrote a novel in French titled Je t'appellerai Amérique ["I'll call you, America"] (1972, Editions Grasset). She later married Jerry Reich of New York City and the couple lived in Boston, New Hampshire, Maine and Paris. Jerry Reich, an advertising executive, died in 2010. Bertin died on 27 November 2014, aged 94.[3][4]
Works
1946: La Parade des impies, Paris, Grasset
1947: La Bague était brisée, Paris, Corrêa
1949: Les Saisons du mélèze, Paris, Corrêa
1953: La Dernière innocence, 1953, Prix Renaudot. English translation by Marjorie Deans, The Last Innocence, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1955
1954: Contre-champ: roman, Paris, Plon
1957: Une femme heureuse: roman, Paris, Corrêa
1958: Le Temps des femmes, Paris, Hachette
1963: La Comédienne, Paris, Grasset
1967: Mayerling, ou le destin fatal des Wittelsbach, Paris, Perrin ISBN978-2-262-00108-7