The American Library in Paris

(Hybrid) Jami Attenberg and Lauren Collins on Writing Through Life
2023-05-16 19:30 - 20:30 (Europe/Paris) | The American Library in Paris
Celebrated novelist Jami Attenberg’s new memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You details a life on the road and the many ways one can create a home. An invigorating race through the varied places and spaces temporarily inhabited by Attenberg before moving on, the book celebrates the rejection of a conventional life in favor of spontaneity and creativity. Throughout it all, we learn, Attenberg found solace in writing: in lieu of a static life, she sought stability in the practice of her craft. Though her subjects and techniques have changed across time, the very activity of putting the pen to paper has remained constant. Attenberg, in conversation with author Lauren Collins, will discuss the meandering trajectory of life and the many roads taken to arrive back at herself.
About the speakers:
Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer. She lives in New Orleans.
Lauren Collins began contributing to the New Yorker in 2003 and became a staff writer in 2008. She is the author of When in French: Love in a Second Language, which the Times named as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2016. She is working on a second book, about a coup d’état perpetrated by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, and its effects on the city during the past 120 years.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Attenberg and Collins will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

Word for Word 2023 at Théâtre Le Ranelagh (Paris 16)
2023-05-16 19:30 - 21:30 | Théâtre le Ranelagh, 5 rue des Vignes, Paris, 75016, France
Word for Word presents
Home by George Saunders
Directed by Sheila Balter
THIS EVENT IS OFF-SITE, AT THÉÂTRE LE RANELAGH (5 Rue des Vignes, 75016 Paris)
Home is the story of Mikey, a war veteran returning to a home that is increasingly cruel and absurd—and his quest for understanding and compassion. Saunders’ subtle yet absurdist humor brings a unique slant to otherwise dark topics. Home is directed by Word for Word core company member Sheila Balter.
This event requires advance registration. Please reserve your tickets below and bring your printed ticket to the show. This event is sponsored by the American Library in Paris, the Fondation Jeannine Manuel, and Word for Word Performing Arts Company.
WORD FOR WORD Performing Arts Company performs short works of fiction in their entirety, preserving the author’s voice and honoring her/his intent with exciting visuals and inventive staging. Founded in 1993 by Susan Harloe and JoAnne Winter, Word for Word believes in the power of the short story to provide solace, compassion, and insight into our daily lives. In its vibrant history, Word for Word has performed over 70 stories by some of the world’s best writers. Many of these stories have been performed in front of the authors themselves.
George Saunders is the author of twelve books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker. His stories have appeared regularly in the New Yorker since 1992. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

(Hybrid) The Humanities in Crisis? with Merve Emre
2023-05-17 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
In anticipation of Merve Emre’s forthcoming monograph, Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, join Emre for a discussion about two curious and much-discussed phenomena. On the one hand, veritable crisis within the academy: against a backdrop of program closures, decreasing student enrollments, and budget cuts, the study of English and history at the collegiate level in America has fallen by a third over the last decade. On the other hand, flourishing outside the classroom walls: professional schools in medicine, law, and business have emerged as new sites for literary study and teaching, drawing productive links between reading literature and in-the-world practice. How did this happen? And what will happen next?
Merve Emre is Professor of Criticism at Wesleyan University and Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. She is the author and editor of several books, including Paraliterary, The Ferrante Letters, The Personality Brokers, and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway, and a contributing writer at the New Yorker. She is working on two books: one on love; the other on the discipline of literary studies.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Emre will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(In Person at the Center for Fiction) The International Library Part I: Notes on Sugar
2023-05-18 19:30 - 20:30 | The Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
In person at the Center for Fiction (Brooklyn, NY) and over Zoom, join celebrated Swiss author Dorothee Elmiger and American writer Kate Zambreno for a conversation about Megan Ewing’s new English translation of Elmiger’s Out of the Sugar Factory (Aus der Zuckerfabrik).
In an era of greed and lust, power and excess, Out of the Sugar Factory plumbs the impact of the sugar manufacturing industry through a kaleidoscope of memories, dreams, literary references, narrative threads, and historical fragments. From the Haitian Revolution and Chantal Akerman, to Karl Marx, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, Elmiger compiles a journal of reflections on global systems of capital through the medium of her personal patterns of experience. At a time when this critical historical lens is under attack across the U.S., we can look to Elmiger’s work as inspiration to keep revising old stories we have told until now.
About the speakers:
Dorothee Elmiger was born in 1985 in Switzerland. She is the author of Out of the Sugar Factory, Shift Sleepers, and Invitation to the Bold of Heart. She lives in New York City.
Kate Zambreno is the author most recently To Write As If Already Dead, a study of Hervé Guibert (Columbia University Press), and the novel Drifts (Riverhead). The Light Room, a meditation on art and care, is forthcoming from Riverhead in July 2023. A collaborative meditation on tone in literature with Sofia Samatar is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in fall 2023. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction, she teaches in the MFA nonfiction program at Columbia University and is the Strachan Donnelley Chair in Environmental Writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Important information: The discussion will take place at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. The conversation will be streamed on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
Access to this event requires registration through the Center for Fiction. Click on the button below to RSVP.
About The International Library
Conversations across time, place, and language
Join the American Library in Paris, the Center for the Art of Translation, and The Center for Fiction for conversations across time, place, culture, and literary tradition, with live audiences in San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Paris.
At the intersection of theory and practice, past and present, as well as story and history, The International Library celebrates the live diffusion of in-person conversations in the hope of conjuring new possibilities and connecting new audiences across land and sea for a collective, intercultural experience.
Over the course of these conversations, we hope to broach the following questions about writing and translation: Who gets to translate? To be translated? How to translate? And for whom to translate? More broadly, the series will guide readers to think critically about how stories are told, investigating the points of view, the timing of the translations, and the intended or assumed audiences as well as inspiration, philosophy, and craft.
All meetings will be hybrid, taking place in person at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn (1:30pm ET) with audiences at the American Library in Paris (in Paris; 19h30 CEST) and the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco (10:30am PT) for a live streaming experience. Events will run for about an hour.
Please write to Alice McCrum (mccrum@americanlibraryinparis.org), Melanie McNair (melanie@centerforfiction.org), or Leslie-Ann Woofter (leslie-ann@catranslation.org) with any questions or thoughts.

(Hybrid) The Task of Translation with Cécile Wajsbrot, Tess Lewis, and Anne Weber
2023-05-23 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
In Cecile Wajsbrot’s Nevermore, a translator haunted by her past moves to a town with its own dark history in order to begin a translation of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. Working on Woolf’s chapter “Time Passes,” she undertakes her own meditation upon the passage of time and the movement of history. Confronting the violent scars of World War II in Woolf’s writing and in Dresden, her new home, our narrator experiences a fusion of the space of the novel with the space around her. As a translator, she is trained to navigate different worlds. Yet with this project, she risks losing herself entirely in this new realm where time, space, and language–much like waves at sea–overlap. Wajsbrot will speak with translators Anne Weber and Tess Miller about the task of the translator, finding the language to recreate destroyed epochs, and the fragile boundaries between literature and life.
About the speakers:
Cécile Wajsbrot was born in Paris in 1954. She writes mostly novels, sometimes essays and radio fictions. She is also a translator, from the English (for instance Virginia Woolf) and from the German. Her latest novel, Nevermore, published in 2021, deals with the process of translation. For more than twenty years she has been living in Paris and Berlin.
Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Lewis is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and was awarded the ACFNY Translation Prize and the 2017 PEN Translation Prize for her translation of the novel Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap.
Anne Weber is a German-French author and translator based in Paris. She has received the 3Sat award at the Festival of German-Language Literature as well as a European translation award for her translation of Pierre Michon. Her most recent novel, Epic Annette, won the 2020 German Book Prize. She was awarded the 2022 Leipzig Book Fair Prize in Translation for her German version of NEVERMORE.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Wajsbrot, Lewis, and Weber will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Breaking the Silence on Menopause with Dr. Mary Claire Haver and Kate Muir
2023-05-24 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Menopause occurs in every menstruating body. Yet few know what to expect when they begin experiencing it, and even fewer understand the science behind the process. Lack of research and cultural taboos around discussions of menstruation have contributed to a general cultural ignorance surrounding the subject, which translates into ill-preparedness and inadequate treatment when it happens. Dr. Mary Claire Haver, MD, has devoted her life to developing nutrition strategies aimed at combating the adverse effects of menopause-induced hormonal changes. Kate Muir has written books and produced documentaries on the subject, aiming to promote awareness and challenge the Together, the two women will discuss the reality of menopause, the stigmas associated with talking about it, and the importance of breaking the silence.
About the speakers:
Dr. Mary Claire Haver is a wife, mom, Board Certified OBGYN, entrepreneur and best- selling author of The Galveston Diet, who has devoted her adult life to women’s health and the treatment of perimenopause and menopause. Dr. Haver believes in the power of nutrition and anti- inflammatory foods to combat midlife inflammation and highly recommends the unique benefits of intermittent fasting. She is a leading voice on social media in the realm of menopause education.
Kate Muir is a menopause expert, writer and filmmaker. She is the author of Everything You Need to Know About the Menopause (but were too afraid to ask) and the producer of three groundbreaking Davina McCall women’s health documentaries, including Sex, Myths and the Menopause for Channel 4 in the UK. Her next book is on the contraceptive pill.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Haver will appear in the Reading Room and Muir will appear over Zoom), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

Environmental Economics with Bianca Getzel, Marlowe Hood, and Juan Pablo Arellano
2023-05-25 19:00 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Whether degrowth or green growth, the circular economy or the end of the capitalist economy as we know it, environmental economics, the study of how we use and manage finite resources, help us understand negative externalities, public goods, and market failures.
This event is organized in partnership with News Decoder and the Climate Academy at the European School of Brussels.
The Library’s contribution to this joint program is supported by the Florence Gould Foundation and the American Center for Arts and Culture.
Please note the special start time of this event.
About the speakers:
Bianca Getzel is a Research Officer in the Development and Public Finance Programme at global affairs think tank ODI.
Marlowe Hood is Senior Editor at Agence France-Presse, covering science, environment, and the climate crisis.
Juan Pablo Arellano is a former content director at ClimateScience, specializing in creating accessible and trustworthy content on climate change solutions. He studied economics and environmental science at university and is currently pursuing a master’s degree on degrowth.
Important information: This conversation will be hybrid, taking place both in person at the American Library in Paris and online.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

History Tour at the Library
2023-05-26 11:00 - 12:00, 2023-06-02 11:00 - 12:00, 2023-06-09 11:00 - 12:00, 2023-06-23 11:00 - 12:00, 2023-06-30 11:00 - 12:00 | The American Library in Paris
The American Library in Paris invites you to register for a History Tour. Come visit us in person at 10 rue du Général Camou and discover:

Our origin story, when our Library warehoused a collection of books donated to the Doughboys fighting alongside Allied troupes in WWI
The establishment of the American Library in Paris as a private library
The famous writers of the Lost Generation (Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, and more) who explored our stacks during their time in Paris
Our Paris Library School, which brought American innovations to French libraries in the 1920s
The true stories of the brave Librarians who kept the Library open during the Occupation of WWII
How the Library has evolved over its 103-year history into the largest English-language lending library on the European continent

All tours are on Fridays at 11h00, last one hour, and take place in person at the American Library in Paris.
Tours are free of charge and open to the public. Pre-registration is required.
This initiative is made possible through the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation and the American Center for Art and Culture.
Please email tours@americanlibraryinparis.org with any questions.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

(Hybrid) Felwine Sarr on Africa’s Struggle for its Art
2023-05-30 19:30 - 20:30 | https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83752125235
In recent years, following social justice movements, the question of the place of stolen African art in European museums has become increasingly urgent. In France, a reassessment of French universalism has brought the question of restitution to a possible turning point: Macron’s headline-making 2017 declaration that France must recognize its colonial past was followed by an equally landmark report on the restitution of stolen African art, written by art historians Bénédicte Savoy and Felewine Sarr. In conversation with journalist Rachel Donadio, Sarr will discuss the monumental report and its consequences. What were the consequences of its publication? Were Macron’s words just empty speech? What happens now? From the Smithsonian to the Louvre, Sarr will explain how substantial change, from the contents of permanent collections to the ways we define art, is coming for major cultural institutions.
About the speakers:
Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese writer and academic. He is Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after having taught at University Gaston Berger at Saint-Louis in Senegal, where he is adjunct professor of Economics. In 2018, the French president commissioned him to write a report, with the art historian Benedicte Savoy, on the restitution of African heritage present in French museums. He has authored thirteen works and is the co-publisher with his publishing house Jimsaan of the Prix Goncourt 2021, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr.
Rachel Donadio is a Paris-based writer and journalist, a contributing writer for the Atlantic, and a former Rome Bureau Chief and European Culture correspondent for the New York Times. She regularly publishes textured profiles and features at the intersection of culture and politics, as well as literary criticism. Since 2022 she has been the administrator of the American Library in Paris annual Book Award.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Sarr and Donadio will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Ben Miller on the Bad Gays of History
2023-06-06 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Pride month is populated by LGBTQ iconography, celebrating the figures across history who demanded the right to live and love freely. Yet how is gay history oversimplified when we only spotlight the heroes of the movement? In Bad Gays, authors Ben Miller and Huew Lemmey have the courage to complicate things. Recounting the lives of people who made mistakes, harmed others, acted in contradictory ways, and happened to be queer, they reveal hidden, human nuances across queer history. At the Library, Miller will offer a more critical perspective on the current status of LGBTQ politics, asking who has been excluded from the political terrain, how previous political failures have been glossed over, and how introducing nuance into our understanding of queer identity can lead to a more just queer future.
About the speaker:
Ben Miller is a writer and historian living in Berlin. With Huw Lemmey, he hosts Bad Gays, a podcast about evil and complicated queers in history, which has been downloaded nearly a million times; a book based on the show and passionately arguing for a more complex and political queer public history, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, was published by Verso in 2022. Since 2018, he has been a member of the board of the Schwules Museum, the world’s largest independent institution devoted to archiving and preserving LGBTQI* histories and visual cultures.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Miller will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Entre Nous: The Times of our Lives with Kate Briggs and Yasmine Seale
2023-06-07 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
In Kate Briggs’ The Long Form, a day takes place. A mother wakes up with her daughter, and proceeds to undertake her quotidian tasks. At the same time, she embarks upon a reflection upon the ways the everyday is made. As the rhythms of motherhood prove fertile ground for rumination upon care, love, and creation, the making of the day becomes analogous to the making of a novel, which becomes the material of the novel itself. Briggs seizes upon a lack of action in order to build a space for the slow and spontaneous wanderings of the mind. Navigating multiple levels of storytelling, time, modes of writing, and modes of thought, she elegantly sweeps through the space of the text and the history of the written word as her character sweeps through the house.
About the speakers:
Kate Briggs is the translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s lecture and seminar notes at the Collège de France: The Preparation of the Novel and How to Live Together, both published by Columbia University Press. She teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. The Long Form, her debut novel, follows This Little Art, a genre-bending essay on translation. In 2021, Kate Briggs was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize.
Yasmine Seale is a writer and translator based in Paris. Her essays on literature, art and film have been published in Harper’s, The Nation, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is the author, with Robin Moger, of Agitated Air: Poems after Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press). Her translations from the Arabic include The Annotated Arabian Nights (W. W. Norton) and Something Evergreen Called Life, a collection of poems by Rania Mamoun (Action Books). She is currently a fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, where she is completing a translation of The Dove’s Necklace by Ibn Hazm, an essay on the nature of love written in 11th-century Cordoba.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Briggs and Seale will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes. The Entre Nous series is co-organized by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and the American Library in Paris.

(In person) Summer 2023 Writing Workshop: Form & Craft Meeting One
2023-06-08 19:00 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Join 2022-23 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow and author Adrienne Raphel for a two-part writing workshop dedicated to form and craft.
In this conversation and generative session, we’ll be joined by author and professor Andrew Altschul to discuss the writing process from soup to nuts. Altschul and Raphel will lead a reading, a conversation, and a Q&A. Then, they’ll lead a writing exercise, with time to draft in the session and discuss as a group.
About the workshop:
A piece of finished writing can seem like it’s always already been in its perfect form, polished from the moment it sprung out of its author’s head. But behind the scenes, as every writer knows, the final product is only the tip of an extremely complicated iceberg.
In this two-part workshop, we’ll be exploring form and craft, focusing on demystifying the process from first draft through revision and publication. Once you have a draft of something, how do you revise it? How do you keep revising? And how do you know when it’s done?
The workshop will unfold over two main sessions. In the first session, we’ll have a reading and conversation with author and professor Andrew Altschul. In the second session, we’ll continue generating new ideas, and we’ll also focus on how to keep re-thinking prior writing. Each draft will become a touchstone for a new conversation.
This series will take place in person at the Library on 8 June and 22 June from 19h00 to 20h30 CEST and is open to both Library Members and non-members.
About the workshop leaders:
Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them, named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review; What Was It For, winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize; and Our Dark Academia (2022). Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Poetry, and many other publications. She has been a featured speaker at events such as the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress, and she serves as a mentor with the Periplus collective. Raphel holds a PhD from Harvard, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA from Princeton. She is currently a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program and teaches with the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
Andrew Altschul is the author of three novels, including most recently The Gringa. His stories and essays have appeared in Esquire, McSweeney’s, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, and anthologies including Best New American Voices and O. Henry Prize Stories. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, he now teaches at Colorado State University.
Advance payment and registration is required:
Members rate: 40€ per participant. (Members please register here.)
Non-members rate: 60€ per participant. (Non-members register here.)
Please email Emilie Biggs, Programs Assistant, biggs@americanlibraryinparis.org with any questions.

An Evening of Poetry with Adrienne Raphel and Megan Fernandes
2023-06-13 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Join 2022-23 Visiting Fellow Adrienne Raphel and poet Megan Fernandes for a special evening dedicated to poetry. Celebrated as two of the most exciting poets of their generation, both Raphel and Fernandes experiment across form, language, and sound to generate fragmented, fleeting images of the current moment. From Fernandes’ transposition of poetry’s most traditional subject–love–to contemporary urban wastelands to Raphel’s adoption of the paranoid, compulsive registers of the Internet, the two diagnose cultural maladies of contemporary society and play with poetry as a means of reconciliation. They will discuss the uses, abuses, and varied appearances of poetry in a frantic world.
About the speakers:
Adrienne Raphel is a 2022-23 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. She is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them, named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review; What Was It For, winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize; and Our Dark Academia, forthcoming this fall. Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and many other publications. She has been a featured speaker at events such as the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress, and she serves as a mentor with the Periplus collective. Raphel holds a PhD from Harvard, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA from Princeton.
Megan Fernandes is a writer living in New York City. Fernandes has published in the New Yorker, POETRY, the Kenyon Review, the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, among others. Her book, Good Boys, was published with Tin House Books in 2020. Her forthcoming collection, I Do Everything I’m Told, will also be published by Tin House in summer 2023. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College where she teaches courses on poetry, environmental writing, and critical theory. She is a former Yaddo fellow, holds a PhD in English from the University of California, and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Raphel and Fernandes will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) The Cathedrals of France with R. Howard Bloch
2023-06-14 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Saint-Denis, Chartres, Sainte-Chapelle, Reims, Amiens and Notre-Dame: in Paris and her Cathedrals, art historian R. Howard Bloch approaches each of these celebrated sites with renewed curiosity, historical rigor, and aesthetic enthusiasm. From thrilling historical intrigues to luxurious architecture and sacred relics, Bloch reanimates the past of the cathedrals, revealing their centrality to French life and identity across epochs. Join Bloch in conversation with architecture expert Barry Bergdoll at the Library as they walk us through the vaulted arches and stone passages of France’s most iconic structures, showing glimpses along the way into ways of life lost to time.
About the speaker:
R. Howard Bloch is the Sterling Professor of French and Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of numerous award-winning books on French literature and art.
Currently a fellow at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination, Barry Bergdoll is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University. A specialist in the history of modern architecture, he served from 2007 to 2014 as Chief Curator of Architecture & Design at the New York Museum of Modern Art. He has also organized exhibitions at the Musée d’Orsay, the Caisse des Monuments Historiques and the Centre Canadien d’Architecture. He is the author of European Architecture: 1750-1890 in the Oxford History of Art series and monographs on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Mies van der Rohe, Léon Vaudoyer, and (as editor) Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Bloch and Bergdoll will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

Critical Conversations Meeting Eight: Solitude
2023-06-15 19:00 - 21:00 | The American Library in Paris
The past century has seen an explosion of single-person dwellings, rare in the previous millennia of human history. But given the ease and ubiquity of communication nowadays, our era may be one not of solitude but rather of solitude avoidance. Humans always had what we might refer to as the “contemplative gap”—accidental time when the lack of distraction, the lack of technology, brought us regularly, however reluctantly, in touch with our own inner thinking and feeling selves.
Now, with constant connectivity, interpersonal connection, and global media only ever a click away, are we eradicating solitude and becoming an externalized species? Has solitude become an act of social dissent? What becomes of the human being when solitude––as opposed to aloneness––is entirely absent? 9 This month we consider different forms of solitude and ask ourselves how important they are. What might we be missing without them?
In partnership with Analog Sea, an offline publisher of printed books, we’re delighted to announce the fourth season of Critical Conversations, an expert-led discussion series that allows Library members to ponder the most important issues of our time. This season, we will reflect on how to lead a contemplative, vital, and unmediated life in an ever-faster digital world. We will discuss questions such as: What do we gain from disconnecting, and how can we do it? How can we sharpen our senses and redirect our attention in order to change our thoughts and actions? And most of all, how can we live in contemporary society with nuance and intention?
Some details: The 2022–23 series will unfold over nine sessions, from November 2022 to July 2023. Conversations will begin at 19h00 CET and run for two hours, in person, at the Library; technology of all description is happily forbidden. Each participant will receive copies of all four Analog Sea Review volumes published so far. Course reading and discussion will, for the most part, be based on work published in The Analog Sea Review. Jonathan Simons, founding editor of Analog Sea, will begin each meeting with some opening remarks, before guiding a group discussion.
About Critical Conversations: Whether in France or America, debate is central to healthy democracy. Critical Conversations encourages both disagreement and agreement through thinking, talking, reading, and actively participating in community. Since the series’ inception in 2020, we have tackled race in America, the climate crisis, and migration. Across seasons, participants have challenged themselves, their peers, and the world in which we live. Please write to Emilie Biggs at biggs@americanlibraryinparis.org with any questions.
About the Critical Conversations 2022-23 leader:
Jonathan Simons is the founding editor of offline publishing house Analog Sea and its literary journal, The Analog Sea Review. As a poet and essayist, he has written for publications including The London Magazine, PN Review, El País, subTerrain Magazine, and The Analog Sea Review. His work has been covered by, among others, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post and La Vanguardia. He researched Buddhist poetics at Naropa University and McGill University and was formerly a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Humans and Machines, in Berlin.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

(Hybrid) The International Library Part II: Translating Traditions
2023-06-15 19:30 - 20:30 | The Center for Fiction, 15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11217, United States
A striking example of translation and its many layers—of language, of myth, of tradition—Samantha Schnee’s new English translation of Mexican author Carmen Boullosa’s The Book of Eve (El libro de Eva) twists, challenges, and ultimately revises a classic tale for a contemporary moment. As Eve, fueled by “fiery disobedience,” tells her own version of the Book of Genesis, she brazenly rejects the stories that have oppressed women across millennia. No, she was not created from Adam’s rib; no, she was not expelled from the Garden of Eden for nibbling a forbidden apple; and no, humanity was not deluged by a great flood. In person at the Center for Fiction (Brooklyn, NY) and over Zoom, join Schnee and Boullosa for a conversation about translation twice (and sometimes thrice) over.
About the speakers:
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. She has published over a dozen novels, two of which were designated the Best Novel Published in Mexico by the prestigious magazine Reforma—her second novel, Before, also won the renowned Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for Best Mexican Novel; and her novel La otra mano de Lepanto was also selected as one of the Top 100 Novels Published in Spanish in the past 25 years. Her most recent novel, Texas: The Great Theft won the 2014 Typographical Era Translation Award, was shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Award, and has been nominated for the 2015 International Dublin Literary Award. Boullosa has received numerous prizes and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship. Also a poet, playwright, essayist, and cultural critic, Boullosa is a Distinguished Lecturer at City College of New York, and her books have been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian.
Samantha Schnee is a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellow in Translation, supporting her work to render Boullosa’s Gijon Prize winning novel, El complot de los románticos, into English as Dante Hits the Road. Her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She is the founding editor of Words Without Borders.
Important information: The discussion will take place at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York. The conversation will be streamed at the Library and on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
If you’d like to attend on Zoom OR in person in Brooklyn, please click the BLUE “ZOOM REGISTRATION BUTTON.” If you would like to attend the livestream of the event at the Library, please click the RED “GOING” BUTTON above.
About The International Library
Conversations across time, place, and language
Join the American Library in Paris, the Center for the Art of Translation, and The Center for Fiction for conversations across time, place, culture, and literary tradition, with live audiences in San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Paris.
At the intersection of theory and practice, past and present, as well as story and history, The International Library celebrates the live diffusion of in-person conversations in the hope of conjuring new possibilities and connecting new audiences across land and sea for a collective, intercultural experience.
Over the course of these conversations, we hope to broach the following questions about writing and translation: Who gets to translate? To be translated? How to translate? And for whom to translate? More broadly, the series will guide readers to think critically about how stories are told, investigating the points of view, the timing of the translations, and the intended or assumed audiences as well as inspiration, philosophy, and craft.
All meetings will be hybrid, taking place in person at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn (1:30pm ET) with audiences at the American Library in Paris (in Paris; 19h30 CEST) and the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco (10:30am PT) for a live streaming experience. Events will run for about an hour.
Please write to Alice McCrum (mccrum@americanlibraryinparis.org), Melanie McNair (melanie@centerforfiction.org), or Leslie-Ann Woofter (leslie-ann@catranslation.org) with any questions or thoughts.

(Online) The Case for Forgetting with Lewis Hyde
2023-06-20 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
From smartphones with unlimited storage to memorials scattered across cities to pseudo-scientific techniques for maintaining brain plasticity, memory is of central importance to our society. Author Lewis Hyde asks: has memory been over-valued? Under what conditions might it be preferable to forget? Considering philosophy, art, and mythology; working through autobiography and cultural criticism, citing writers from from Hesiod to Nietzsche to Borges, Hyde develops a spiritual, therapeutic, and political case for forgetting. Ultimately, he offers a manifesto for creativity: out of oblivion, Hyde proposes, comes the artistic capacity for the radically new. Join Hyde as he walks us through his own forgotten life and instructs us in forgetting our own.
About the speaker:
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. Best known for The Gift, a defense of the non-commercial portion of artistic practice, Hyde recently published A Primer for Forgetting, an exploration of the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory. A MacArthur Fellow, Hyde taught creative writing and American literature for many years at Kenyon College. Now retired, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Patricia Vigderman.
Important information: This event is online. Attendees will receive a Zoom link upon registration. Participants will be able to pose questions through the Zoom chat function.
This event requires advance registration.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Natasha Lance Rogoff on Post-Soviet Sesame Street
2023-06-21 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Early 1990s Russia: the wall has fallen, the Soviet Empire has collapsed, and a new social order is being built from the ground up. Faced with corrupt government officials, bumbling diplomats, traumatized citizens, and rapidly globalizing capitalism, a fractured nation holds onto a last hope for the salvation of their children: puppets. Join Natasha Lance Rogoff to discuss Muppets in Moscow, the “unexpected crazy true story” of her time as lead producer on Russia’s Sesame Street. As the West dismantled the iron curtain, Rogoff was responsible for teaching the first post-soviet generation how to communicate their feelings, contribute to society, and show kindness to one another. From government raids to assassinations to clashes over puppet design, step into the world of Ulitsa Sezam.
About the speakers:
Natasha Lance Rogoff is an award-winning television director, producer and writer of more than 25 years. Her previous credits include executive producer of Ulitsa Sezam (Sesame Street in Russia) and producer of Plaza Sesamo (Sesame Street in Mexico.) After studying at the Leningrad State University, she wrote about Soviet underground culture, as well as one of the earliest exposé of Soviet government persecution of the Russian LGBTQ community in the San Francisco Chronicle. She is now an Associate in the Art, Film and Visual Studies Department at Harvard University and lives between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Edward Charlton-Jones studied History and Russian at Oxford and Harvard. He has written and lectured on the Russian emigration to Constantinople in 1918-1923, as well as on aspects of Russian literature and art. He has practiced law in Paris and Istanbul, with a focus on international energy projects.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Rogoff will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(In person) Summer 2023 Writing Workshop: Form & Craft Meeting Two
2023-06-22 19:00 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Join 2022-23 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow and author Adrienne Raphel for a two-part writing workshop dedicated to form and craft.
In this workshop, we’ll continue to generate new writing, and we’ll also share and comment on previous compositions. Participants are warmly welcome to bring drafts composed anytime prior to the class, including during Meeting One. But bringing in work is not a requirement, as we’ll also be generating new work in the beginning of the session. In the revision process, we’ll focus on encouragement and guidance, rather than on critique. As a community, we’ll practice revision through inspiration. Each draft becomes the starting point for a new mode of discussion.
About the workshop:
A piece of finished writing can seem like it’s always already been in its perfect form, polished from the moment it sprung out of its author’s head. But behind the scenes, as every writer knows, the final product is only the tip of an extremely complicated iceberg.
In this two-part workshop, we’ll be exploring form and craft, focusing on demystifying the process from first draft through revision and publication. Once you have a draft of something, how do you revise it? How do you keep revising? And how do you know when it’s done?
The workshop will unfold over two main sessions. In the first session, we’ll have a reading and conversation with author and professor Andrew Altschul. In the second session, we’ll continue generating new ideas, and we’ll also focus on how to keep re-thinking prior writing. Each draft will become a touchstone for a new conversation.
This series will take place in person at the Library on 8 June and 22 June from 19h00 to 20h30 CEST and is open to both Library Members and non-members.
About 2022-23 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow Adrienne Raphel:
Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them, named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review; What Was It For, winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize; and Our Dark Academia (2022). Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Poetry, and many other publications. She has been a featured speaker at events such as the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress, and she serves as a mentor with the Periplus collective. Raphel holds a PhD from Harvard, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA from Princeton. She is currently a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program and teaches with the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
Advance payment and registration is required:
Members rate: 40€ per participant. (Members please register here.)
Non-members rate: 60€ per participant. (Non-members register here.)
Please email Emilie Biggs, Programs Assistant, biggs@americanlibraryinparis.org with any questions.

Winning at College, with Richard Montauk (ages 14–adult)
2023-06-25 14:00 - 15:30 | The American Library in Paris
This presentation by guest host Richard Montauk is aimed at students who will soon go to college (and their parents, of course). We will not cover the usual advice students receive as they head to college: “study hard, eat your vegetables, and learn—at long last—how to do your own laundry.” Instead, we’ll examine strategic academic considerations, such as:

The hidden issues concerning course selection and timing, distribution requirements, and choice of majors.
The value of methods courses, undergraduate research, writing a thesis, and aiming for nationally competitive fellowships

On the non-academic side, we’ll examine the surprising factors that drive success beyond academics, including the modern determinants of career access and success. Substantial time will be available—during and after the presentation—for questions.
About Richard Montauk: Richard Montauk is the author of a series of best-selling guides, all published by Prentice Hall, including How to Get Into the Top Colleges and How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs. His most recent books include College Interviews: The Definitive Guide and Getting into Brown: Successful Applicants’ Essays, Resumes, and Interviews. He received a BA in literature from Brown University, an MA in government from Harvard, an MS in finance, and a JD from Stanford Law School. Pursuant to a graduate fellowship, he also studied at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London). After graduating from Stanford, Richard worked as a corporate lawyer for Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles, then as a corporate strategy consultant for Bain & Co. in London, before devoting himself full-time to admissions consulting. Since 1991, he has consulted to candidates for the world’s top universities, for both undergraduate and graduate programs. He can be reached through his website: www.richardmontauk.com. Important information:
This event is free for Library members, and 15€ per teen for non-members. Advance registration is required. All visitors are expected to familiarize themselves with the Library Policy for Children and the Rules and Code of Conduct so that we can provide a pleasant library environment for all patrons.
Questions about collections and programs for children and teens can be sent to the Library’s Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

(Hybrid) The Women who Refused with Jennifer Tamas
2023-06-27 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Nothing seems more counterintuitive than to turn to the society of the Ancien Régime in order to to understand female resistance. Called upon by civility treatises to demonstrate reserve, or to feign resistance by codes of seduction, one might conclude that the heroines of classical literature have nothing to teach us, and certainly not the capacity to say ‘no’. Jennifer Tamas proposes otherwise. In Au NON des femmes, she demonstrates how the women of the Grand Siècle resisted, disobeyed, and left traces of combat against a patriarchal society. From the Princesse de Clèves to Bérénice, Tamas uncovers a lineage of powerful, subversive refusals on the part of heroines, obfuscated by centuries of patriarchal interpretations. Offering a new way of reading classical texts, Tamas liberates the women of literature from the masculine gaze which has falsely rendered them submissive.
About the speaker:
Jennifer Tamas is Associate Professor of French at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA). Her teaching interests range from the Old Regime to the French Revolution and explore the boundaries between passions and politics. She received her Agrégation de Lettres in 2006 and her PhD from Stanford University in 2013. She holds a further PhD in Literature and Stylistics from Paris IV Sorbonne, which she received in 2012.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Tamas will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Crafting a Project with Adrienne Raphel
2023-06-28 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
Adrienne Raphel is an expert in locating the invisible yet ubiquitous and rendering it worthy of investigation–even uncanny. From uncovering hidden histories of crossword puzzle mania to deforming Internet jargon past any point of possible meaning, Raphel’s work reveals the extraordinary lurking beneath the surface of the ordinary. Over the month of June, Raphel will continue to nurture this critical approach toward the everyday as a Visiting Fellow while researching Parisian urban imagination. What are the different stages of crafting a project? What phases does it go through? When, if ever, is it complete? Join Raphel in discussing the evolutions this project has undergone and the research process itself, from initial ideas to drafting to the always nebulous notion of a finished product.
About the speaker:
Adrienne Raphel is a 2022-23 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. She is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them, named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review; What Was It For, winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize; and Our Dark Academia, forthcoming this fall. Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and many other publications. She has been a featured speaker at events such as the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress, and she serves as a mentor with the Periplus collective. Raphel holds a PhD from Harvard, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA from Princeton.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Raphel will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

(Hybrid) Tim Crosland, Irmak Kanyılmaz, and Linda Sheehan on Legislating for the Future
2023-06-29 19:00 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
How can we expand our sense of time to confront the long-term (and increasingly short-term) devastation of the climate crisis? How to, moreover, legislate against this devastation? And to legislate on behalf of who exactly? The rivers and the trees? The children of the future?
This event is organized n partnership with News Decoder and the Climate Academy at the European School of Brussels.
The Library’s contribution to this joint program is supported by the Florence Gould Foundation and the American Center for Arts and Culture.
Please note the special start time of this event.
About the speakers:
Tim Crosland, a former barrister, is the Director of Plan B, a foundation supporting strategic legal action to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Irmak Kanyılmaz is a student at the European School of Belgium II. She enjoys doing research and learning about new concepts, especially in the sciences and mathematics.
Executive Director to Environment Now, Linda Sheehan guides Environment Now’s work to protect and restore California’s coastal, freshwater and forest ecosystems, for the benefit of all Californians.
Important information: This conversation will be hybrid, taking place both in person at the American Library in Paris and online.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

The Inquisitor's Tale with Adam Gidwitz (ages 6–adult)
2023-07-01 14:00 - 15:30 | The American Library in Paris
Join the Children and Teens Services staff to celebrate children’s author Adam Gidwitz, and listen as he shares stories about creating the award-winning novel The Inquisitor’s Tale, or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog. Learn how he put his research about thirteenth-century France together and mixed it up with his own stories to create this tale, then stay for a Q&A with the author!

Mr. Gidwitz will be signing books, and books will be available for purchase at this event courtesy of a local bookseller.

About Adam Gidwitz: Adam Gidwitz is the author of the Newbery Honor book The Inquisitor’s Tale, the bestseller A Tale Dark & Grimm and its companions, and the bestselling series The Unicorn Rescue Society. He is also the creator and narrator of the award winning podcast Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest, and he helped produce the Emmy-nominated animated adaptation of A Tale Dark & Grimm for Netflix. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, daughter, and a dog named Lucy Goosey. She is not the inspiration for the holy dog in The Inquisitor’s Tale because there is nothing even remotely holy about her. Still, she is a good dog. Find out more here.
Important information: This event is for Library members, and advance registration is required. Caregivers are expected to familiarize themselves with the Library Policy for Children and the Rules and Code of Conduct so that we can provide a pleasant library environment for all patrons. Questions about collections and programs for children and teens can be sent to the Library’s Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

(Hybrid) The Problem of Parking with Henry Grabar
2023-07-05 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
An invisible evil holds American cities and suburbs in a deathgrip. Tying bureaucrats in administrative knots, grinding development projects, green initiatives, and housing plans to a halt, regularly ruining the average commuter’s morning, no problem is more American than the problem of parking. In Paved Paradise, journalist Henry Grabar provides an astonishing, fascinating ride through the history of parking across the American landscape, from New York to Disney World. As the U.S. faces a worsening housing crisis, and as green space disappears from urban centers, he asks: how has storing cars taken priority over human life? Join him in conversation with journalist Simon Kuper to learn how the vast American expanse has been taken captive by concrete.
About the speaker:
Henry Grabar is a staff writer at Slate who writes about housing, transportation, and urban policy. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and other publications, and was the editor of the book The Future of Transportation. He received the Richard Rogers Fellowship from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and was a finalist for the Livingston Award for excellence in national reporting by journalists under thirty-five.
Simon Kuper was educated at Oxford University and Harvard. He has been working for the Financial Times since 1994, and now writes a general column for the newspaper. His recent books include The Happy Traitor, his biography of the double agent George Blake (2021) and Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Invented Modern Football (2021), which won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year. His Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, appeared in 2022 and became a Sunday Times bestseller.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Grabar will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.
This event requires advance registration.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
Evenings with an Author are free and open to the public (with a 10€ suggested donation)
thanks to the generous support of Gregory Annenberg Weingarten of GRoW @ Annenberg.

Critical Conversations Meeting Nine: Freedom and Civility
2023-07-06 19:00 - 21:00 | The American Library in Paris
From Nike’s 1988 “Just Do It” campaign to Ronald Regan’s notable speech on free-market capitalism at Moscow State University of the same year, the eighties saw American conceptions of freedom shift from age-old communal pursuits to individualist ideals. Late 10 capitalism is marked by its persistent promises of liberation through consumption, and the digital lifestyle is the ne plus ultra of commodified freedom.
In this, our last seminar, we will look at freedom through a number of philosophical lenses. As individuals, what makes us free? What does freedom mean for a society, and can freedom flourish in the digital age?
In partnership with Analog Sea, an offline publisher of printed books, we’re delighted to announce the fourth season of Critical Conversations, an expert-led discussion series that allows Library members to ponder the most important issues of our time. This season, we will reflect on how to lead a contemplative, vital, and unmediated life in an ever-faster digital world. We will discuss questions such as: What do we gain from disconnecting, and how can we do it? How can we sharpen our senses and redirect our attention in order to change our thoughts and actions? And most of all, how can we live in contemporary society with nuance and intention?
Some details: The 2022–23 series will unfold over nine sessions, from November 2022 to July 2023. Conversations will begin at 19h00 CET and run for two hours, in person, at the Library; technology of all description is happily forbidden. Each participant will receive copies of all four Analog Sea Review volumes published so far. Course reading and discussion will, for the most part, be based on work published in The Analog Sea Review. Jonathan Simons, founding editor of Analog Sea, will begin each meeting with some opening remarks, before guiding a group discussion.
About Critical Conversations: Whether in France or America, debate is central to healthy democracy. Critical Conversations encourages both disagreement and agreement through thinking, talking, reading, and actively participating in community. Since the series’ inception in 2020, we have tackled race in America, the climate crisis, and migration. Across seasons, participants have challenged themselves, their peers, and the world in which we live. Please write to Emilie Biggs at biggs@americanlibraryinparis.org with any questions.
About the Critical Conversations 2022-23 leader:
Jonathan Simons is the founding editor of offline publishing house Analog Sea and its literary journal, The Analog Sea Review. As a poet and essayist, he has written for publications including The London Magazine, PN Review, El País, subTerrain Magazine, and The Analog Sea Review. His work has been covered by, among others, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post and La Vanguardia. He researched Buddhist poetics at Naropa University and McGill University and was formerly a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Humans and Machines, in Berlin.
Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.
