The American Library in Paris

Evenings with an Author: Oliver Gee [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-11-04 19:30 - 20:30 (Europe/Paris)
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Join us for an evening with Oliver Gee!
Follow this link to register.
Oliver Gee is an Australian who’s been in Paris since 2015. He arrived as a journalist, but now makes a living as the host of the hugely popular Paris travel podcast “The Earful Tower”. This year, he released his laugh-out-loud memoir, Paris On Air, which he will discuss with us live on Zoom. Oliver will give an entertaining performance and host a lively Q&A in which he’ll talk about publishing a book during a lockdown, cancelling a mega US book tour and doing it virtually instead, and the perks and perils of life as a podcaster in the City of Light.

In Paris On Air, Oliver Gee tells of how five years in France taught him how to order cheese, make a Parisian person smile, and convince anyone you can fake French (even if, like Oliver, you speak the language like an Australian cow).
A fresh voice on the Paris scene, he shares the soaring highs and crushing lows that come with following your dreams to the French capital.
He also befriends the city’s too-cool-for-school basketballers, chases runaway crocodiles, and goes on a mammoth honeymoon trip around France on his little red scooter.
To order, please visit www.theearfultower.com/memoir.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Eula Biss in conversation with Susan Harlan [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-11-10 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please click here to register.
Join us for an interview with Eula Biss about her newest book, Having and Being Had, moderated by Susan Harlan.
“My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges— in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences— she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by The New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”
Eula Biss is the author of four books, most recently Having and Being Had, which Cathy Park Hong calls “a revelatory and necessary primer on how late capitalism affects our daily lives.” Biss holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and has been teaching writing at Northwestern University for fifteen years. Her book On Immunity was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review and Notes from No Man’s Land won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 2009. Her work has been translated into over ten languages and has been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library, and a Pushcart Prize. Her essays and poems have recently appeared in the New Yorker, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, The Believer, Harper’s, and the New York Times Magazine.

Susan Harlan’s essays have appeared in venues including The Guardian US, The Paris Review Daily, Guernica, Roads & Kingdoms, Literary Hub, The Common, Racked, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Bitter Southerner, and Public Books. Her book Luggage takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. She also writes satire for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Billfold, Avidly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Hairpin, The Belladonna, Janice, and The Establishment, and her humor book Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables was published by Abrams last October. She teaches English literature at Wake Forest University.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: François-Xavier Fauvelle [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-11-17 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please join us for a book talk on The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages
Click here to sign up!
From the birth of Islam in the seventh century to the voyages of European exploration in the fifteenth, Africa was at the center of a vibrant exchange of goods and ideas. It was an African golden age in which places like Ghana, Nubia, and Zimbabwe became the crossroads of civilizations, and where African royals, thinkers, and artists played celebrated roles in the globalized world of the Middle Ages. Francois-Xavier Fauvelle brings this unsung era marvelously to life, taking readers from the Sahara and the Nile River Valley to the Ethiopian highlands and southern Africa. Drawing on fragmented written sources as well as his many years of experience as an archaeologist, Fauvelle painstakingly reconstructs an African past that is too often denied its place in history.

François-Xavier Fauvelle received his PhD from the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he specialized in the history of Africa. Since 2002, he has been affiliated with the CNRS and the Institute for African Studies in Aix-en-Provence. He spent time as a researcher in the US, Ethiopia, and South Africa. Since returning to France in 2009, he joined a research team, TRACES, at the University of Toulouse-II-Jean-Jaurès. With his colleagues François Bon and Caroline Robion-Brunner, he created “le Pôle Afrique,” a research initiative bringing together archaologists specializing in Africa and doctoral students, some originating from Africa, pursuing doctoral research in the field. He has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2019.
To order the book at a special discounted rate, please visit https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691181264/the-golden-rhinoceros
(Use code FAU20 at checkout to receive a 30% discount on sterling and euro + p&p)

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Scott Carpenter in conversation with Erin Byrne [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-11-24 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please click here to register.
Join Erin Byrne as she interviews Scott Dominic Carpenter about his hilarious new memoir, French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris
When Scott Carpenter moves from Minnesota to Paris, little does he suspect the dramas that await: scheming neighbors, police denunciations, surly demonstrators, cooking disasters, medical mishaps―not to mention all those lectures about cheese! It turns out that nothing in the City of Light can be taken for granted, where even trips to the grocery store lead to adventure. In French Like Moi, Carpenter guides us through the merry labyrinth of the everyday, one hilarious faux pas after another. Through it all, he keeps his eye on the central mystery of what makes the French French (and Midwesterners Midwestern).

Scott Dominic Carpenter teaches literature and creative writing at Carleton College (MN). Winner of a Mark Twain House Royal Nonesuch Prize (2018) and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, he’s the author of Theory of Remainders: A Novel (named to Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Books of 2013”) and of This Jealous Earth: Stories. His shorter work has appeared in a wide variety of venues, including South Dakota Review, The Rumpus, Silk Road, Catapult, and various anthologies. His website is sdcarpenter.com.

Erin Byrne is the award-winning author of Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France, editor of Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco and Vignettes & Postcards from Paris and writer of The Storykeeper film. She is Travel Writing and Photography Curator of The Creative Process Exhibition, and has taught writing at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Book Passage Bookstore, and on Deep Travel trips. To learn more, visit e-byrne.com
Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Peter Gumbel in conversation with Charles Fleming [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-11-25 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This fall, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please click here to register.

Citizens of Everywhere: Searching for Identity in the Age of Brexit

In 1939, with Europe on the brink of war, Peter Gumbel’s grandparents fled Nazi Germany for England. In 2019, appalled by the result of the Brexit referendum and the ugliness it exposed in the UK’s politics and wider society, he became a citizen of Germany, the country that had persecuted his grandparents eighty years earlier. How had it come to this? In his latest book, Citizens of Everywhere, Gumbel uses the story of his family to explore existential issues of identity and belonging in today’s unsettled world. In this Evening with an Author, he will discuss the essay and reflect on its key themes: the resurgence of a nationalistic world view, the growing multiplicity of identity in the digital age, and a surprising reversal of roles as Germany replaces Britain as the hope-bearer in Europe.

Peter Gumbel is a Paris-based writer and editor. He spent sixteen years at the Wall Street Journal, including postings in New York, Moscow, Berlin, and Los Angeles, and moved to Paris in 2002 to cover European business and the economy for Time Magazine. In 2006, the Work Foundation named him Journalist of the Year. He is the author of four books on France, including a best-selling critique of the French education system, On achève bien les écoliers (“They Shoot School Kids, Don’t They?”)
Peter will be interviewed by Charles Fleming, a communications consultant and former Wall Street Journal reporter.

To purchase Citizens of Everywhere, click here.
Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Maurice Samuels [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-12-08 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Click here to register for this event!

The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal that Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern

The year was 1832, a cholera pandemic raged, and the French royal family was in exile, driven out by yet another revolution. From a drafty Scottish castle, the duchesse de Berry — the mother of the eleven-year-old heir to the throne — hatched a plot to restore the Bourbon dynasty, but was betrayed by her trusted advisor, the son of France’s Chief Rabbi. The betrayal became a cause célèbre for Bourbon loyalists and ignited a firestorm of hate against France’s Jews. By blaming an entire people for the actions of a single man, the duchess’s supporters set the terms for the century of antisemitism that followed.

Dr. Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he is also the founding director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he is the author of three previous books, including The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2016). He lives in New Haven, CT and New York City.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Amor Towles in conversation with Mark Mayer [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2020-12-16 19:30 - 20:30
Update (posted 16/12/20): A Zoom meeting link has been sent to all registered participants. Please check your spam folder if you have not received it (do not sign up twice). If you are registering for the first time today, Wednesday 16 December, you can expect a forwarded email with the link to be delivered within an hour or so of your registration.

*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Click here to register for this event!
Please join us for a conversation with author Amor Towles (moderated by Mark Mayer) about writing, inspiration, and especially, the hugely popular novel, A Gentleman in Moscow (French translation- Un gentleman à Moscou, out now with Editions Fayard).
Born and raised in the Boston area, Amor Towles received his BA from Yale College and an MA in English from Stanford University. His first novel, Rules of Civility, published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011. His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, published in 2016, was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year while in hardcover. It was named as one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. Both novels have sold over one million copies and been translated into over twenty languages. Having worked as an investment professional for over twenty years, Mr. Towles now devotes himself fulltime to writing in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Mark Mayer has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of Denver. His first book, AERIALISTS, won the Michener-Copernicus Prize and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He has been published in American Short Fiction, the Kenyon Review, Guernica, the Iowa Review, Best American Mystery Stories, and the New York Times and interviewed in the Paris Review and BOMB. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the University of Memphis MFA.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

A Special Panel on Change over Time in Technology and Ethics- from 2000 to 2021 [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-01-06 19:30 - 21:00
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Follow this link to register!
A Panel on Change over Time in Technology and Ethics- from 2000 to 2021
This special panel, moderated by Christine Finn and featuring Nicholas Hall and Mike Cassidy as discussants, will explore and debate the issues surrounding technology and our relationship with its ethics. Finn first interviewed the discussants in 2000 while adopting a left-field take on technology though its fast-changing material culture, (Artifacts: an archaeologist’s year in Silicon Valley: MIT Press 2001). They will cover the state of tech around the year 2000, before and after the dot com bubble burst, through the era of startups, the beginnings of social media as a benign means to connect people and ideas, and apps to make life simpler, to our present concerns about social media leaving us vulnerable, and divided by technology. While innovation has the potential for positive and sweeping change, have the technologies developed in the last two decades grown too large and powerful, and beyond regulation we rely upon to protect us? Inspired in part by recent popular documentaries such as The Social Dilemma and The Great Hack, panelists will share their recollections of the early days of tech and Silicon Valley, and reflect upon how we got here, where we might go next, and what an ethics of technology might look like.

Christine Finn is a journalist and creative archaeologist, and author of Artifacts: an Archaeologist’s Year in Silicon Valley (MIT Press, 2001) and Past Poetic: Archaeology and the Poetry of WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney (Duckworth, 2004). She began her journalism career at 16, and has followed it from analogue to digital, print, blog, photography and broadcast, including the BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent”, Wired.com, and Edge.org. In 2003 she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. She is a former Reuter Fellow at Oxford, before returning in 1992 as one of the first undergrads to read Archaeology and Anthropology, continuing to a doctorate in archaeology and poetry. She has received seven Arts Council England awards as a visual artist. Her site-specific work engages with change-over-time in technology and media.

Mike Cassidy, Signifyd lead storyteller: I was a long-time journalist at the newspaper of Silicon Valley, covering the valley’s rise and fall and rise and, well, you get the idea. I worked and watched as the Mercury News became one of the best newspapers in the U.S., shortly before a death-defying collapse that has rendered it almost invisible. I fled to a tech start-up and then another, called Signifyd, where I tell the story of a company that protects merchants from online fraud.

Nicholas Hall: I met Christine Finn when she wrote a little piece about my community website, Startupfailures, back in 2001. I created the community website after the collapse of my startup, Intori, which was focused on becoming an online tool to support offline business networking. At one time I had over 4,000 connections on LinkedIn but now under 100. The same was true with Facebook. As the noise grows, our ability to listen lessens. Can you hear me now?

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

The American Library in Paris Book Award 2020 [Virtual Event]
2021-01-14 19:30 - 20:30
Honoring literature. Interpreting France.

Date: 14 January 2021 at 19h30 CET
Location: Hosted live on Zoom

RSVP required- please follow this link to register.

Digital tickets to the 2020 Book Award Ceremony are now available. For the first time, the ceremony will be open to the public and there is no cost to attend. Please sign up below to be added to the event’s guest list and login information will be sent to you in January.
The winner of the 2020 prize will be announced and will deliver a live talk on their winning book. The evening will also include a tribute to Library supporters, remarks from the jury about the six shortlisted books, and many other special surprises.
The Book Award ceremony is the Library’s most significant donor appreciation event of the year, and the Library will host a separate gathering to celebrate the generosity of its community. If you haven’t donated this year and you would like to join the hundreds of supporters who have made a contribution in 2020, please use the donate button on this page.

The Ship We Built: A Discussion with Lexie Bean and Noah Grigni (ages 9-adult) [VIRTUAL—BY RSVP]
2021-01-16 14:00 - 15:00
Please join us for an interactive book talk on The Ship We Built with author Lexie Bean and illustrator Noah Grigni.
for ages 9-Adult
Please join us for an interactive book talk on The Ship We Built with author Lexie Bean and illustrator Noah Grigni. We’ll talk about the creative process, and how identity shaped the story, as well as how the author and illustrator worked together to find artwork to fit the story. Lexie will read a passage from The Ship We Built, and Noah will share several of the sketches used in the book, then following a discussion moderated by Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste, we will move into a Q&A with the audience. Both Lexie and Noah identify as queer and trans, and The Ship We Built, which received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist, is the first middle grade book from a major American publisher centering a trans boy and written by one. The text deals with themes of isolation, faith, gender and sexuality, abuse, addiction, incarceration, and imagination as a tool for survival. This event is sure to interest young readers, aspiring writers, activists, and artists of all ages. You can check out the book from our collections.
About Lexie: Lexie Bean is a queer and trans multi-media artist from the Midwest USA whose work revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identity. They are a member of the RAINN National Leadership Council and are Lambda Literary Finalist for their anthology Written on the Body, centering trans survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault. The Ship We Built is their debut novel, which began with a text message dare from a crush in 2014. It has also taken the form of an animated short, and soon a feature-length script. Like Rowan, Lexie has a deep resonance with water and letter writing, and is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

About Noah: Noah Grigni is a children’s book illustrator and trans activist from Atlanta, Georgia. Influenced by queer futurism, magical realism, dreams, and the subconscious, Noah uses art to imagine a radically inclusive future and uplift voices fighting for change. Their art ranges from vibrant watercolor illustrations, to meticulous anatomical drawings, to promotional graphics for activist groups. Noah is the illustrator of It Feels Good To Be Yourself by Theresa Thorn, The Every Body Book by Rachel Simon, The Ship We Built by Lexie Bean, and The Gender Identity Workbook For Kids by Kelly Storck. Last year, The American Library in Paris hosted Noah’s first-ever book signing event! Noah is excited to return to the library virtually for this discussion.

This event is free and open to the public (ages 9-Adult). This event will be hosted virtually via Zoom. Registered participants will be sent a link to join the event. Advance registration is required (register HERE).

Send an email to Celeste, our Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, with questions about events and collections for ages 0-18: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Evenings with an Author: Fiona Sze-Lorrain [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-01-26 19:30 - 20:30
Photo by Dominique Nabokov
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Click here to register for this event!
Join us for an evening of poetry and art
Fiona Sze-Lorrain is one of the rare few English-language poets of our times who works across genres and artistic expressions, as well as more than three languages or cultures. In this reading, she will present poems from her latest collection, Rain in Plural (Princeton, 2020), and her new translations of contemporary Chinese-language and American poets. She will also discuss the role and aesthetics of poetry beyond language/culture in a seemingly globalized yet politically fragile world, and the relationship between her writing, music, art, and life.

“If ordering the book via the link above, attendees can use the code RAI21 for a 20% discount on the website. This code will expire on 28 February 2021.”
Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, translator, editor, and zheng harpist who writes and translates in English, French, Chinese, and occasionally Spanish. Her latest poetry title out from Princeton is Rain in Plural (2020). Also the author of The Ruined Elegance (2016), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and two earlier collections, My Funeral Gondola (2014) and Water the Moon (2010), she has translated more than a dozen books of contemporary Chinese, French, and American poetry. A 2019-20 Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, she lives in Paris and co-runs a small independent press, Vif Éditions.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: V. E. Schwab [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-01-27 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Click here to register for this event!
VICTORIA “V.E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the internationally acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, the Cassidy Blake series and more. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is set to be adapted into a feature film by eOne and First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story – is set to hit Netflix, produced by Emma Roberts’ Belletrist Productions. When she’s not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters. Her newest book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, follows the title character across centuries and continents, across history and art, as she learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
For her evening at the American Library, Victoria will be in conversation with Kirsty McCulloch Reid. Kirsty works here at the Library, assisting in the Children’s and Teens’ Services department with programs, the collection, and social media. She holds a Masters in Information and Library studies from Robert Gordon University.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Stephen Clarke [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-02 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Follow this link to register!
Join us for an evening with Stephen Clarke as he presents his new book, The Spy Who Inspired Me

It is April 1944, just before D-Day. A young woman spy, Margaux Lynd, has to go undercover into Occupied France to find missing agents in the Resistance. Unfortunately she is lumbered with a male sidekick, a suave naval officer called Ian Lemming (not, not Fleming). He thinks Occupied France is dirty and dangerous and wants to go back to his office in the Admiralty, but she has to drag him along, and meanwhile teaches him all the tricks of real wartime spy craft. To compensate for the humiliation, he starts to fantasise about a male spy who would operate in champagne luxury while lording it over women. A world-famous secret agent is born…

Stephen Clarke is a British writer living in Paris (unless he’s since been deported because of Brexit). He is the author of the worldwide bestselling Merde series of novels about an Englishman failing to adapt to life in France. He has also written history books such as 1000 Years of Annoying the French and The French Revolution & What Went Wrong.

Praise for Stephen Clarke
‘An entertaining and thrilling read.’ -The Historical Novel Society.
‘Tremendously entertaining’ -Sunday Times
‘Outrageously readable’ -Daily Mail
‘Edgier than Bryson, hits harder than Mayle’ -The Times
‘Wicked and witty’ -Daily Express
‘Breezy, entertaining’ -Sunday Express

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Suzanne Nossel in conversation with Michelle Kuo [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-09 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please follow this link to register!
Join us for an interview with Suzanne Nossel (moderated by author and lawyer Michelle Kuo) as she introduces her new book, Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All
Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch—or end—your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent.
In Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, free-wheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips readers with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly-divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression.
Suzanne Nossel is Chief Executive Officer at PEN America and author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All. Prior to joining PEN America, she served as the Chief Operating Officer of Human Rights Watch and as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. She has served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, leading US engagement in the UN and multilateral institutions on human right issues, and in the Clinton Administration as Deputy to the US Ambassador for UN Management and Reform. Nossel coined the term “Smart Power,” which was the title of a 2004 article she published in Foreign Affairs Magazine and later became the theme of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure in office. She is a featured columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and has published op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times, as well as scholarly articles in Foreign Affairs, Dissent, and Democracy, among others. Nossel serves on the Board of Directors of the Tides Foundation. She is a former senior fellow at the Century Foundation, the Center for American Progress, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Nossel is a magna cum laude graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Michelle Kuo is the author of Reading with Patrick, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Goddard Riverside Book for Social Justice. She has worked as a lawyer for undocumented immigrants and incarcerated people. Michelle has written for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Public Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, and other publications. Currently, she is an associate professor of History, Law, and Society at the American University of Paris, where she works closely with students on issues of social justice.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Paul Richter [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-10 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Follow this link to register!
Join us for an evening with Paul Richter as he presents his new book, The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors is the story of a small circle of career U.S. ambassadors who served as Washington’s top troubleshooters in the greater Middle East in the tumultuous decade and a half after the 911 attacks. Thrust into war and upheaval, these diplomats took on far more than most envoys — organizing new governments, brokering political deals between warring blocs, overseeing military operations. They served as another line of national defense, often at the risk of their own lives. The book offers insiders’ perspectives on America’s frustrated efforts in the volatile region, and an assessment of the American diplomatic service in a period when the Trump administration has challenged its value. The book was awarded the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon Prize for distinguished writing on American diplomacy.

Paul Richter has written about foreign policy and national security for three decades. As a Washington-based reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he traveled to sixty countries and appeared in U.S. and international media. He is also principal author of California and the American Tax Revolt, University of California Press, 1983. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Fredrik Logevall in conversation with Charles Trueheart [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-16 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!
Please join us for an evening of conversation with Dr. Fredrik Logevall about his latest book, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956, with an interview moderated by Charles Trueheart
By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person.
Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history.
Along the way, Logevall tells the parallel story of America’s midcentury rise. As Kennedy comes of age, we see the charged debate between isolationists and interventionists in the years before Pearl Harbor; the tumult of the Second World War, through which the United States emerged as a global colossus; the outbreak and spread of the Cold War; the domestic politics of anti-Communism and the attendant scourge of McCarthyism; the growth of television’s influence on politics; and more.
JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 is a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as well as the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon.

Fredrik Logevall is Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs and professor of history at Harvard University. A specialist on U.S. foreign-relations history and modern international history, he is the author or editor of nine books, most recently Embers of War, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Francis Parkman Prize.

Charles Trueheart was director of the American Library in Paris from 2007 to 2017, and he continues to oversee its annual book award. Most of his earlier career was in journalism, including 15 years at the Washington Post, first covering book and magazine publishing and literary issues, then as a correspondent in Canada and France. Before joining the Post, Trueheart was associate director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and the American Scholar, where he is a contributing editor. Trueheart was educated at Exeter and Amherst.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Lilianne Milgrom [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-17 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Please click here to register.
Join us for a book talk with Lilianne Milgrom about her new novel, L’Origine: The secret life of the world’s most erotic masterpiece
Lilianne Milgrom brings a fresh, feminine perspective to Gustave Courbet’s infamous and contentious portrait of a woman’s exposed torso and sex entitled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), a painting that has drawn millions of visitors to Paris’ Orsay Museum. L’Origine traces the extraordinary, clandestine odyssey of this iconic nineteenth-century painting that shook up the author’s world and continues to scandalize all who set eyes upon it. But L’Origine offers readers more than a riveting romp through history–it also reflects upon society’s complex attitude towards female nudity.
Born in Paris, Lilianne Milgrom grew up in Australia and now resides in the United States. She is an artist, author and published writer on the arts. She is the recipient of multiple awards and residencies. Her paintings can be found in both private and institutional collections around the world and her articles have appeared in publications such as the Huffington Post, Bonjour Paris, Inspirelle, Ceramics Monthly and Daily Art Magazine. In 2020 she released her first novel, L’Origine: The secret life of the world’s most erotic masterpiece (Little French Girl Press, 2020) receiving critical praise from readers and art historians alike.
Book trailer available here.
To purchase the book, please follow this link.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

You and Your Kids Online: Internet Safety Tips with Elizabeth Milovidov (for parents and caregivers) [VIRTUAL—RSVP REQUIRED]
2021-02-20 11:00 - 12:00
To foster discussion and provide support for our community, we’re hosting this special event for parents with digital safety advocate Elizabeth Milovidov. Bring along your questions and concerns.

Internet Safety Advocate Prof. Elizabeth Milovidov will host this event and give parents tips as to how to keep up to date and cope appropriately with new technologies and devices considering the increasingly digital world in which our children are growing up.
The event will feature an open discussion focused on online technologies from social media to gaming consoles. Special attention will be given to screen addictions, Internet Safety measures and how to protect our children on the digital highway.

About Elizabeth:

Dr. Elizabeth Milovidov is a law professor and children’s rights advocate. She practiced as an international lawyer, litigator and General Counsel in California for four years before moving to France. She is the founder of DigitalParentingCoach.com and provides information and support to caregivers and parents who are looking for best practices when it comes to social media, internet laws and the internet at large. Elizabeth’s publications include The Parent’s Guide to Parenting in the Digital Age, The Parent’s Guide to Youtube and Youtube Kids, and The Parent’s Guide to Digital Detox and Disconnect (available at The American Library in Paris). As a member of the Working Group of experts on Digital Citizenship Education, she brings awareness to the adolescent digital world, and serves as an active advisor on European Cooperation and International Projects for e-Enfance, a French online child protection association. You can find tips and expert advice from Elizabeth in her interviews with France24, InternetMatters.org, Financial Times, and CafeMom to name a few. Elizabeth’s passion for navigating the digital world stems from her two young, tech-savvy children.

Join the Digital Parenting Community on Facebook, or follow Elizabeth on Instagram for 1 Minute tutorials and tips about online safety.

This program requires advance registration, and is open to Library members. Click HERE to register. This program is free for Library members. Registered participants will be sent a link to join the event via Zoom.

Evenings with an Author: Janet Skeslien Charles in conversation with Naida Culshaw [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-02-24 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Join us for an evening of conversation with Janet Skeslien Charles, author of The Paris Library and an interview moderated by Naida Culshaw
Sign up here!

Based on the true World War II story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable story of romance, friendship, family, and the power of literature to bring us together.
Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet has it all: her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.
Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them.
A powerful novel that explores the consequences of our choices and the relationships that make us who we are—family, friends, and favorite authors—The Paris Library shows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest of places.

Janet Skeslien Charles (left) is the award-winning author of Moonlight in Odessa and The Paris Library. Her shorter work has appeared in revues such as Slice and Montana Noir. She learned about the history of the American Library in Paris while working there as the programs manager.

Naida Culshaw (right) is a workshop facilitator, developmental coach, and lecturer at the Grenoble Ecole de Management (GEM). As an alumni of the American Library in Paris she continues to create learning environments designed to encourage reflection, self-expression, analytical and critical thinking.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

Evenings with an Author: Nita Wiggins [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-02 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Sign up here!

Join us as Nita Wiggins presents her book, Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism

Civil Rights Baby is about a determined girl’s pursuit of the career she wants, believing the laws of the land, especially the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protect her. But, in reaching her dream destination in Dallas, she finds that the decades of competing in a male-dominated field have brutalized her on many levels. Fighting for acceptance and proving qualifications come to a dramatic head one day–leading her to move to France.

An American author and award-winning sports broadcaster, Nita Wiggins teaches at l’Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris. Since 2009, she has trained students to include a wider range of perspectives and voices to better serve the public. Because of her impact on education, Black Women in Europe named Wiggins to the group’s Power List of 2018. In the U.S., Wiggins worked 21 years as a reporter and anchor, for ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox affiliates. She’s an occasional guest on France 24. Outside of journalism, she has created a Listen to Others as you would have them listen to you program so that people can improve their relationships in their working and private lives.

Evenings with an Author are generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg

A Panel on Women's Travel Writing in France and Beyond, moderated by Erin Byrne [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-03 19:30 - 21:00
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!
A special panel event centered around The Best Women’s Travel Writing , Volume 12: True Stories from Around the World
Join us for a special virtual reading and conversation celebrating The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12: True Stories from Around the World, the newest collection in the award-winning series that invites you to travel along with intrepid female nomads as they wander the globe. The program will feature New Orleans-based editor Lavinia Spalding and contributing writers Christina Ammon, Erin Byrne, Marcia DeSanctis, and Colette Hannahan.
This new volume offers readers illuminating cultural connections and personal revelations to inform and encourage their future journeys. Stories offer insights through the lens of a woman’s experience in a foreign place. The result is a rich and intimate personal exploration of a culture and lasting shifts in personal perspective.

Lavinia Spalding has edited five previous editions of The Best Women’s Travel Writing. She is the author of Writing Away and the co-author of With a Measure of Grace and This Immeasurable Place, and she introduced the e-book edition of Edith Wharton’s classic travelogue, A Motor-Flight Through France. Her work appears in such publications as Tin House, Longreads, Yoga Journal, Sunset, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Guardian, and has been widely anthologized. Her AFAR essay “Playing by Heart” received a Lowell Thomas Gold Award and was recognized by The Best American Travel Writing. She is also a public speaker and teacher. When she isn’t leading international writing workshops, she lives with her family in New Orleans and on Cape Cod. laviniaspalding.com

Christina Ammon has penned stories for BBC, Orion Magazine, Hemispheres, the San Francisco Chronicle, Conde Nast, and numerous travel anthologies. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship for nonfiction, and her stories have earned several awards from Travelers’ Tales publishers. In the winters, she organizes writing and storytelling workshops in Morocco, Mexico, Nepal, and Spain through her company, Deep Travel Workshops. When not traveling, she lives in rural Oregon. deeptravelworkshops.com

Erin Byrne is author of Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France, editor of Vignettes & Postcards from Paris and Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco, and writer of The Storykeeper film. Erin’s books, travel essays, poetry, fiction and screenplays have won awards including the 2020 Grand Prize Solas Award for Travel Story of the Year. She has taught writing at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris; is host of LitWings event series featuring writers, photographers and filmmakers; and is travel writing and photography curator for The Creative Process Exhibition. She lives in Seattle. erinbyrnewriter.com

Marcia DeSanctis is a former television news producer who worked for Barbara Walters and Peter Jennings at ABC News, and at CBS News 60 Minutes and NBC News. She is the New York Times bestselling author of 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go, and she contributes to Vogue, Town & Country, Departures, Travel & Leisure, BBC Travel, National Geographic Traveler, Marie Claire, The New York Times, and many other publications. She is the recipient of five Lowell Thomas Awards for excellence in travel journalism, including one for Travel Journalist of the Year, for her essays from Rwanda, Russia, Haiti, France, and Morocco. She lived and worked for several years in Paris and travels as much as possible to France. marciadesanctis.com

Colette Hannahan is a San Francisco-based writer, painter, and illustrator who created of the illustrations for The Best Women’s Travel Writing. In addition to peddling knives in Minnesota, she has delivered mail at a retreat center in the woods of the Hudson Valley, applied makeup on brides-to-be at a salon in Brooklyn, steamed blouses for models in Manhattan, taught art and yoga to adults with autism in Chicago, mentored teens at a boarding school in New Mexico, and organized fundraisers for artists with life-threatening illnesses in San Francisco. colettehannahan.com

Paris by Phone: A Reading with Pamela Druckerman (ages 5–adult) [VIRTUAL; RSVP REQUIRED]
2021-03-06 11:00 - 12:00
For children ages 5+ their families

Enjoy a reading of Paris by Phone by bestselling author Pamela Druckerman, followed by a Q&A.

The magic of independence meets the meaning of home in the picture book debut of the #1 bestselling author of Bringing Up Bébé. When Josephine Harris decides that Paris is where she really belongs, all it takes is a quick call on her magical phone to whisk her away. The city of lights has fancy cafés, baguettes under every arm, the Eiffel Tower, and a fabulous new family who can’t wait to show her around.
Join us as Pamela reads Paris by Phone from her own home in the city of light, and then stick around for a Q&A about her writing process and the inspiration for her first picture book.

About Pamela:
Pamela Druckerman is the author of five books including Bringing Up Bébé, which has been translated into 30 languages and optioned as a feature film by Blueprint Pictures. (Its UK title is French Children Don’t Throw Food.) Pamela also wrote There Are No Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story, Bébé Day By Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting and Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. Her rhyming picture book for kids, Paris by Phone, illustrated by Benjamin Chaud, will appear in February 2021. Pamela writes a column about France for The New York Times, and the Dress Code column for 1843/The Economist. Her op-eds, essays, articles and reviews have also appeared in the The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair France, Madame Figaro, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Times (UK), The Sunday Times (U.K.) and many other publications. She has appeared as a commentator on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, BBC Woman’s Hour, Good Morning America, the Today Show, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, PRI, the CBC, Europe1, Le Grand Journal, On n’est pas couché, France24 and Oprah.com.

This event requires advance registration. Click HERE to register.

This event is free and open to the public. We thank you for your continued support and for being a part of the Library community! If you would like to support the Library, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.

Writing Workshop with Erin Byrne- La Fin (finishing that piece!) [Virtual Event, Library members only, RSVP Required]
2021-03-11 19:00 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This spring, the Library’s programs will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. This event is limited to Library members and requires advance reservation.
Register here!
La Fin- Finally finishing that piece that has taken forever to write
Do you have a piece of work, whether an essay, short story, book, or film, that you have left hanging, and may not even know why? It’s time to see it through to the end!
In this workshop, we will sharpen our writerly intuition to ascertain the reasons we have been unable to finish this work:
Are we truly “stuck” with some kind of block? (This is seldom the case)
Does this piece of work simply need more time to percolate?
Are we being lazy?
What is missing from this work that may be required?
Is the ending evading us?
In each case, we will move forward – get unstuck, find how to nurture a growing story, kick ourselves into gear, or pick up the threads and work to a natural and satisfying ending.

Erin Byrne is the award-winning author of Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France, editor of Vignettes & Postcards from Morocco and Vignettes & Postcards from Paris and writer of The Storykeeper film. She is Travel Writing and Photography Curator of The Creative Process Exhibition, and has taught writing at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Book Passage Bookstore, and on Deep Travel trips. To learn more, visit erinbyrnewriter.com

Evenings with an Author: Lisa Barrett [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-17 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This spring, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!
Have you ever wondered why you have a brain?
Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You’ll learn where brains came from, how they’re structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience. Along the way, you’ll also learn to dismiss popular myths such as the idea of a “lizard brain” and the alleged battle between thoughts and emotions, or even between nature and nurture, to determine your behavior. Sure to intrigue casual readers and scientific veterans alike, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is full of surprises, humor, and important implications for human nature.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is among the top 1% most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University with appointments at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Barrett was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in neuroscience in 2019, and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada. She is also the author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain.

Evenings with an Author: Kate Kirkpatrick [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-24 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!
Join us for an evening with Dr. Kate Kirkpatrick as she speaks about her new book, Becoming Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. Yet her life has been widely misrepresented and profoundly misunderstood. In Becoming Beauvoir, Kate Kirkpatrick draws on previously unpublished diaries and letters to offer a unique insight into Beauvoir’s relationships, her philosophy of freedom and love, and the complex struggle it was to become herself.

photo (c) John Cairns
Dr. Kate Kirkpatrick is Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Her research focuses primarily on French existentialism and phenomenology, the philosophy of religion, and feminist philosophy.

Writing Workshop with Laura Cronk- Poetry, Nonfiction, and Open Genre [Virtual Event, Library members only, RSVP Required]
2021-03-25 19:00 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This spring, the Library’s programs will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up. This event is limited to Library members and requires advance reservation. Please use this form to sign up.
Register here!
Join us for a Writing Workshop with Laura Cronk (Poetry, Nonfiction, and Open Genre)
What would you say if you could speak directly to a former apartment, to a powerful leader, to your alarm clock, to time itself?
The classic poetic device of apostrophe, or direct address, can be uniquely productive for both poets and prose writers, leading us into discovery and unexpected connection. This generative session provides an opportunity to experiment with apostrophe and the idea of the ode. As Kenneth Koch, an American poet with an affinity for Paris, did in his book New Addresses, we’ll aim to surprise ourselves by writing directly to who and what haunts us, delights us, and has shaped us. Open to writers of any genre.
Workshop Agenda:
Introduction & conversation with Joydeep Sengupta
Presentation of ode examples
Two timed writing sessions of ten minutes each
Reflection and optional sharing with class

Laura Cronk is the author of two books of poems, Ghost Hour and Having Been an Accomplice from Persea Books. She is the chair of undergraduate writing at The New School in New York City where she teaches courses on pedagogy and creative practice. More information at lauracronk.org.

Joydeep Sengupta is a corporate lawyer who moved to Paris from New York City, and a member of the American Library in Paris. He fully agrees with one of his law school teachers who once told him, “Behind every great lawyer are the ruins of a poet.”

Evenings with an Author: Lisa See in conversation with Pauline Lemasson [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-30 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!
An evening of conversation with Lisa See on writing, inspiration, and female friendships
Please join us for a conversation with New York Times bestselling author Lisa See (moderated by Pauline Lemasson) about writing, creativity and inspiration, female friendships, and historical research, with particular focus on her novels Shanghai Girls (2010), The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (2017) and The Island of Sea Women (2019). See’s fiction is widely read and beloved for her deep look into Chinese culture and history, the focus on female friendships, and the long arc of historical events written in lavish detail. We will discuss her writing process, where she finds creativity and inspiration, how she dives into historical research, and what she finds in female relationships that hold up against time, hardship, and life-changing choices.

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of The Island of Sea Women, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The Island of Sea Women, Peony in Love, Shanghai Girls, China Dolls, and Dreams of Joy, which debuted at #1. She is also the author of On Gold Mountain, which tells the story of her Chinese American family’s settlement in Los Angeles. Ms. See has also written a mystery series that takes place in China. Her books have been published in 39 languages. See was the recipient of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California and the History Maker’s Award from the Chinese American Museum. She was also named National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese American Women.
Ms. See wrote the libretto for Los Angeles Opera based on On Gold Mountain, which premiered in June 2000. That same year, she also curated the exhibition On Gold Mountain: A Chinese American Experience at the Autry Museum. Ms. See then helped develop and curate the Family Discovery Gallery at the Autry Museum, an interactive space for children and their families that focused on Lisa’s bi-racial, bi-cultural family. In 2003, she curated the inaugural exhibition—a retrospective of artist Tyrus Wong—for the grand opening of the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles.

Pauline Lemasson is contributing writer on culture, history, and current affairs for Inspirelle and Untapped Paris. She was formerly the Strategic Partnerships Manager at the American Library in Paris and Executive Director of the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles.

Evenings with an Author: Dylan Fisher [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-03-31 19:30 - 20:30
*Covid-19 Update: This winter, the Library’s Evening with an Author series will continue to meet virtually, via Zoom. These events, which are free and open to the public, require advance sign up. Evenings with an Author programs begin at 19h30 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.
Register here!

In Dylan Fisher’s debut novella, told in a sequence of long, twisting, breathless sentences, the titular The Loneliest Band in France claims to have a song that can hurt —even kill—its listeners. When Migara (a Sri Lankan student, new to Montpellier) is recruited to help debut this murderous song, he’s forced to interrogate his relationship with his mother’s death, his estranged father, his own aspirations—and the cost of each.
Dylan Fisher’s first book, The Loneliest Band in France, was the Winner of Texas Review Press’s 2019 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and a 2020 Coups de Cœur selection by The American Library in Paris. He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he’s pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Georgia State University.

Evenings with an Author: Cara Black presents "Three Hours in Paris" [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-04-06 19:30 - 20:30 | The American Library in Paris
CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.
Join the American Library in Paris’s Evenings with an Author series on 6 April as we host “doyenne of the Parisian crime novel” Cara Black. During this virtual conversation with Programs Manager Alice McCrum, Black will speak about her latest book, Three Hours in Paris.
Named a Best Mystery of 2020 by the Washington Post, Three Hours in Paris reimagines Hitler’s brief visit to Paris in June of 1940. The thriller tells the story of a young American markswoman, Kate, tasked with assassinating the Führer against the fall of the City of Lights to the Nazis. Miles away from her native rural Oregon, Kate fights for her life and the fate of the world.
The program will draw on live questions from the audience.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.

About the author: Cara Black‘s affinity for France is the driving force behind her work. The attention to detail and immersive research undertaken during her trips to Paris earned the New York Times-bestselling author a Médaille de la Ville de Paris for her contributions to French culture. Best known for the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, Black is regarded as one of the leading names in Parisian crime novels. Visit www.carablack.com to learn more.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.

Evenings with an Author: Amanda Dennis in Conversation with Rachel Donadio [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-04-13 19:30 - 20:30
CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.
Join the American Library in Paris’s Evenings with an Author series as we host author Amanda Dennis. Dennis with be speaking about her debut novel, Her Here, in conversation with Rachel Donadio, contributing writer at The Atlantic. In Her Here, Dennis introduces us to a reckless and unmoored Elena, who abandons her studies and relationship for an unconventional task proposed to her by an estranged family friend. Struggling with trauma and its various manifestations, Elena loses herself in Thailand while looking for a woman who went missing six years earlier. Dennis delivers an existential detective story in a hypnotic and seductive debut which demonstrates the revealing nature of narrative itself. The conversation will include live questions from the audience.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.

About the authors: Amanda Dennis is an assistant professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the American University of Paris. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley Department of Rhetoric and was awarded a Whited Fellowship in creative writing from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Outside of her speaking engagements for Her Here, Dennis is researching Samuel Beckett and the influence of 20th century French philosophy on his work.

Rachel Donadio is a Paris-based contributing writer for The Atlantic, covering politics and culture across Europe. She was previously a correspondent at the New York Times, including its European Culture Correspondent and Rome Bureau Chief, and a writer and editor at the New York Times Book Review. She has reported from more than two dozen countries, interviewed heads of state and film directors, and profiled three Nobel laureates in literature.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.
