The de Groot Visiting Fellowship
The de Groot Visiting Fellowship Program at the American Library in Paris supports writers, thinkers, and scholars across disciplines who advance dialogue, creativity, and cross-cultural understanding.
Established in 2013, the Fellowship extends the Library’s long tradition of fostering transatlantic exchange and creative expression. Each year, two Visiting Fellows and three Scholars of Note pursue their projects in Paris while contributing to the Library’s cultural life through public talks and workshops. Over the past decade, Fellows have enriched the Library’s century-old legacy and, in turn, joined the generations of writers who have found a home in Paris.
In addition to working on their own project, Fellows present a public program during their residency that engages our audience and members around a central theme. The theme for 2025-2026 is Ways of Seeing, in line with the Library’s eponymous series exploring how literature and visual art inspire one another.
For more than a decade, the de Groot family and the American Library in Paris have supported forty-four writers through a residency in the heart of literary Paris. Fellows include journalists, novelists, poets, and librarians whose work and influence have only grown since their time with us. Many describe their residency as a turning point in their creative lives and careers.
A New Chapter
Beginning in 2025, the Fellowship enters a new phase. Named in recognition of the de Groot family’s extraordinary support, this next chapter strengthens the program’s foundation and helps ensure that future generations of writers will continue to find inspiration, community, and creative freedom in Paris.
“The American Library was kind enough to award me a Visiting Fellowship in January of 2015 where I was able to work out part of the story in my book focusing on France, and Paris specifically. It’s no exaggeration to say that this book began at the American Library in Paris and was finished at the American Library in Paris, which I first visited in 2013 to give a talk. The Library was an invaluable resource to me and I hope that people of good will continue to support it so that it may remain a valuable resource to other writers and readers.”
The 2025–26 Visiting Fellows
R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Exhibit, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Kwon’s bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Prize. Kwon coedited the bestselling Kink, a New York Times Notable Book. Her books have been translated into seven languages and named a best book of the year by over forty publications. Other writing has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and elsewhere. At the Library, Kwon will work on her third novel, which is about a Korean American woman who plans a heist of historically significant art.
Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me. The novel was a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by the New York Times. His forthcoming novel, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood, is slated for publication by Flatiron in 2026. Rasheed is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. Along with his screenplay writing partner, T.J. Brady, Newson co-developed and is an executive producer of Bel-Air. At the Library, Newson will be conducting research for a novel about the experience of a gay, African-American, male runway model with a dark complexion, who becomes a brief international sensation during Paris Fashion Week in 1992.
“It’s difficult for me to imagine my in-progress novel without the time I’ve had as a Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris. The Library opened wide so many doors—research doors, experiential doors—that I don’t think I could have begun to crack open on my own. The fellowship has been indispensable, a great blessing. There’s nothing quite like it. I’m deeply, intensely grateful to every single person who helped make this fellowship possible.”
The 2025–26 Scholars of Note
In recognition of the many outstanding candidates who apply each year to the Library’s Visiting Fellowship program, the Selection Committee created the Scholar of Note distinction to honor individuals whose applications stand out for their exceptional merit.
Established in 2022, the distinction is generously supported by The de Groot Foundation.
Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship, and Negative Space. Her work has been published by the New York Times, The Atlantic, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Guernica, Literary Hub, and more. Dancyger is the recipient of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award, the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee, the Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize, and an Artist Fellowship in nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She lives in New York City and teaches at the Randolph College low-residency MFA program. At the Library, Dancyger will work on a book-length three-part essay about ballet as an artform and a physical practice, chronic pain, and the mind/body connection.
Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of several books, including most recently Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller. She works across genres, also penning works in theater, television, and comics. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. At the Library, Ewing will be working on a collection of essays about the joy and craft of bread and what it reveals about society, culture, history, and communities.
Brenda Withers is a playwright, theater artist, and founding member of the Harbor Stage Company on Cape Cod. Her plays (The Ding Dongs, Off Peak, Matt & Ben) have been produced Off Broadway and across the United States and have earned her the Clauder Prize, an Edgerton Award, and the Modern Works Festival grand prize. She has enjoyed residencies with New Georges, the Camargo Foundation, and the Huntington Theatre. Withers is a lyricist with BMI’s Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop, a graduate of Dartmouth College, and a beach person. At the Library, Withers will be working on the libretto for an original musical about the life of Julia Child.
Past Visiting Fellows
Past Scholars of Note
“I have spent a lot of my career, a lot of my life, in collecting institutions—and there is nothing that compares to having a room of one’s own in a library, to live, casually, abundantly, in the stacks, to really watch what happens, who is there, what it means, passing the spines of old friends, discovery, waiting, discovery again.”
