The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding.
The Fellowship offers writers, researchers, and creators the unique opportunity to spend a month in Paris working independently on their own creative project while contributing to the cultural life of the Library.
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.
The Visiting Fellowship is made possible by the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.
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 a 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.
“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.”
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.
The Fellowship Guidance Panel
Established in 2025, a three-member Fellowship Guidance Panel meets several times a year to share experience, expertise, and best-practice insights that reinforce the program’s excellence. Its current members are past Fellow Melissa Febos, Alan Michael Parker, and Sarah Perry.
Past Visiting Fellows
Past Scholars of Note
“As much as I rely on the Internet, I’m a big fan of going places. As a reporter for The Boston Globe, I learned that there was a lot that could be accomplished on the telephone, on deadline, but that there was always something to be gained just by showing up at an event, bumping into people, observing things, or having unplanned conversations. A Visiting Fellowship at the American Library in Paris was an extraordinary opportunity, prima facie. It was made even more so by all these experiences, many of which I could not have planned. So while I cannot possibly express my gratitude sufficiently to the American Library in Paris, the board and staff, to the de Groots and the de Groot Foundation, I can say that it worked. I’m confident that future Visiting Fellows will have similar unscripted revelations. Who knows what might await. My advice to them would be as follows: Just go.”
