The American Library in Paris

Story Hour: We Love the Library (ages 3–5)
2021-09-01 14:30 - 15:30 (Europe/Paris)
For ages 3–5
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.
3–5 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for an interactive Story Hour outdoors in a small group! This program lasts one hour, and features songs, stories and hand rhymes in English. Each Story Hour is hosted by one of our children’s librarians with the help of a Library volunteer. In the event of rain the event will be moved indoors to our Children’s Library.
For this Story Hour, we’ll read stories about libraries, and making the most of your library card.
This Story Hour will be hosted by Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads, with the help of Library volunteer Mary Wessels. They will read books and lead you and your little one in songs and hand-rhymes during a live, interactive session. This participatory program is intended to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Plan to join in, sing along, and move around, and model movement and listening for your little one.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP.

We are an independent, nonprofit organization. With your continued support, we are able to provide over 200 programs each year for ages 0-18. If you would like to support the Library, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service. This Story Hour is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email with more information about where we will meet. Registration closes 24 hours before the event. Each parent/guardian is responsible for their own child, and is expected to remain with their child for the duration of this activity.
Questions about programs and collections for children and teens can be sent to Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Story Hour in the Park: Monster Mayhem (ages 3–5)
2021-08-18 14:30 - 15:30
For ages 3–5
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.
3–5 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for an interactive Story Hour outdoors in a small group! This program lasts one hour, and features songs, stories and hand rhymes in English. Each Story Hour is hosted by one of our children’s librarians with the help of a Library volunteer.
For this Story Hour, we’ll read stories about friendly, fabulous, and funny monsters, including Go Away Big Green Monster, by Ed Emberly.
This Story Hour will be hosted by Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads, with the help of Library volunteers. They will read books and lead you and your little one in songs and hand-rhymes during a live, interactive session. This participatory program is intended to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Plan to join in, sing along, and move around, and model movement and listening for your little one.

This Story Hour is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email with more information about where we will meet. Registration closes 24 hours before the event. Each parent/guardian is responsible for their own child, and is expected to remain with their child for the duration of this activity.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.

We are an independent, nonprofit organization. With your continued support, we are able to provide over 200 programs each year for ages 0-18. If you would like to support the Library, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.
Questions about programs and collections for children and teens can be sent to Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Natural Disasters (ages 6–12) [VIRTUAL]
2021-07-31 11:00 - 12:00
For ages 6–12
CLICK HERE TO RSVP
Join Children’s and Teens’ Librarian Kirsty for a virtual event all about natural disasters. Tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis—we’ll look at all kinds of natural disasters and how they occur, how they affect people and the environment.

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required.

If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP
Questions about programs and collections for children and teens can be sent to Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Story Hour in the Park: Let's Sail Away (ages 3–5)
2021-07-28 14:30 - 15:30
For ages 3–5
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.
3–5 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for an interactive Story Hour outdoors in a small group! This program lasts one hour, and features songs, stories and hand rhymes in English. Each Story Hour is hosted by one of our children’s librarians with the help of a Library volunteer.
For this Story Hour, we’ll read stories about sailing and boats of all kind, including the book Sail Away by Donald Crews.
This Story Hour will be hosted by Children’s and Teens’ Librarian Kirsty, along with volunteer Mary Wessels who will read books and lead you and your little one in songs and hand-rhymes during a live, interactive session. This participatory program is intended to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Plan to join in, sing along, and move around, and model movement and listening for your little one.

This Story Hour is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email with more information about where we will meet. Registration closes 24 hours before the event. Each parent/guardian is responsible for their own child, and is expected to remain with their child for the duration of this activity.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.

We are an independent, nonprofit organization. With your continued support, we are able to provide over 200 programs each year for ages 0-18. If you would like to support the Library, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.

Tales of Resistance (Batalion & Magida)
2021-07-13 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to discuss
Tales of Resistance
with writers Judy Batalion and Arthur Magida
Click here to RSVP
Batalion’s latest book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos is a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters—a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.
Magida’s Code Name Madeline: A Sufi Spy in Nazi-Occupied Paris follows the captivating story of the valiant Noor Inayat Khan, daughter of an Indian Sufi mystic and unlikely Second World War heroine. Carefully distilled from dozens of interviews, newly discovered manuscripts, official documents and personal letters, the book is both a compelling, deeply researched history and a thrilling tribute to Noor Inayat Khan, whose courage and faith guided her through the most brutal regime in history.
Click here to RSVP
Batalion photographed by Beowulf Sheehan
Judy Batalion is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly-acclaimed The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos. The Light of Days has been published in a young readers’ edition, will be translated into nineteen languages and has been optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture for which Judy is co-writing the screenplay. Judy is also the author of White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood and the Mess in Between, optioned by Warner Brothers, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Forward, Vogue, and many other publications. Judy has a BA in the History of Science from Harvard and a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, University of London, and has worked as a museum curator and university lecturer. Born in Montreal, where she grew up speaking English, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish, she lives in New York with her husband and three children.
Magida photographed by Craig Terkowitz
Click here to RSVP
Arthur J. Magida has been a professor at Georgetown University and the University of Baltimore, a columnist for Beliefnet.com, a contributing correspondent to PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, senior editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, environmental reporter for National Journal, a writer/editor for Ralph Nader. and a consultant to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Two of his highly praised books — Code Name Madeleine and The Nazi Séance — have been optioned for films. His other books include The Rabbi and The Hit Man and Prophet of Rage. A graduate of Marlboro College and Georgetown, he has written for Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Report and Geo Magazine as well as received multiple Simon Rockower Awards from the American Jewish Press Association, A.D. Emmart Awards for writing on the humanities and Smolar Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Fantasy Book Club: The Cruel Prince (ages 12-adult) [VIRTUAL]
2021-07-10 16:00 - 17:00
Join fantasy fans to discuss new worlds and novels with like-minded readers.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
Join us (virtually) for an animated discussion each month of the latest and greatest fantasy reads. Participants are also encouraged to prepare a cup of tea or coffee to enjoy during the meeting. New members are always welcome!

In July, we’ll be reading and discussing The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, plus its sequels The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing. If you haven’t read all three you are still welcome to join but beware there will be spoilers! This book club meeting will be facilitated by Children’s and Teens’ Librarian (and fantasy fan) Kirsty.

Advance registration is required for this book group. Once registered, participants will be sent an email with instructions to join the online meeting. Participation in this book group is open to Library members, and free of charge. If you are not yet a Library member, but would like to participate, please join the Library before this session.

Send an email to Kirsty, our Children’s and Teens’ Librarian, with questions about this event: kirsty@americanlibraryinparis.org.
For questions about collections or events at the Library for Children and Teens contact Celeste Rhoads, our Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Word Wizardry (ages 8–12)
2021-07-03 11:00 - 12:00
For ages 8–12
CLICK HERE TO RSVP

Join Children’s and Teens’ Librarian Kirsty for a small-group workshop all about vocabulary!
We’ll play word games and complete challenges to practice spelling and learn new words.
This event will be in-person in the Children’s Library for a small group. Masks are required.

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required.

If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service. If you have questions about events and/or collections for children and teens, please contact Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP

History of Paris Scavenger Hunt (ages 6–12)
2021-06-26 11:00 - 17:00
For ages 6–12
CLICK HERE TO RSVP
Join us for a scavenger hunt full of facts and fun!

This event is planned to take place outdoors (so bring your rain boots and umbrellas if it looks cloudy!) and is intended for children and their caregivers. Stop by the Children’s and Teens’ Services Desk between 11h00–17h00 to pick up your scavenger hunt and find out the rules, then set off in the Library and outdoors in the surrounding neighborhood to hunt down the answers to questions about the history of Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Masks are required for all participants over age 8. Please note: the majority of this activity will take place out of doors, and all children must be accompanied by an adult chaperone!

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required.

If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP

Privacy is Power (Véliz)
2021-06-23 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to discuss
Privacy is Power
with philosopher and professor Carissa Véliz
Click here to RSVP

An urgent and hands-on guide for taking back our right to privacy, Privacy is Power is full of simple and effective analogies that make it clear how companies are stealing our private data, why this is harmful, and what can be done about it, while offering practical solutions for both policymakers and private citizens.

Click here to RSVP

Carissa Véliz

Carissa Véliz is a philosopher, an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a tutorial fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. She came to Privacy is Power from a philosophical perspective: while researching her grandparents, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, she began to wonder if she had a right to the information she was discovering about them. Véliz’s journey to her treatise on privacy was personal and organic; the academics came later.

An Evening with Paula Deitz
2021-06-22 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) for a discussion with
Paula Deitz
RSVP HERE
Paula Deitz by Gaylen Morgan
Paula Deitz is editor of The Hudson Review. She is also a cultural critic whose articles about art, architecture and landscape design appear in newspapers and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. A graduate of Smith College, she received her MA in French literature from Columbia University. In 2006, she was awarded an LHD (Hon) from Smith College. Her book, Of Gardens: Selected Essays (Penn Press), is now an audiobook. In addition, she has edited two anthologies: Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review and Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology.
Founded in 1948, The Hudson Review is a quarterly magazine of literature and the arts published in New York City. Frederick Morgan, one of its founding editors, edited the magazine for its first fifty years. Paula Deitz has been the editor since 1998. It serves as a forum for new writers and the exploration of developments in literature and the arts. It is distinguished for publishing undiscovered writers from diverse backgrounds, many of whom have become major literary figures. Each issue contains a wide range of material including: poetry, fiction, essays on literary and cultural topics, book reviews, reports from abroad, and chronicles covering film, theatre, dance, music and art. The Hudson Review is distributed in the U.S. and 25 countries.
Deitz’s forthcoming book, Thibaut’s Heart: A Journey Through France and Time, follows Thibaut IV (1201–1253), Count of Champagne, who was a famous chansonnier. Sixty-six of his songs have survived. He became King of Navarre through an uncle; and when Thibaut died in Pamplona, his heart was allegedly returned to Champagne for burial in a convent in Provins. Curious as to whether his heart was still there, she decided to travel the itinerary of his life to find what remained of what he saw in the thirteenth century. The book is a memoir of this experience. The Ensemble Alla Francesca performed ten of his songs in a concert at the Musée de Cluny, and their recording will be distributed with the book.
RSVP HERE

A Tribute to James Baldwin
2021-06-17 21:00 - 22:00
Join the Mechanics’ Institute (online) to reflect on the life and work of
James Baldwin
with authors James Campbell, Clifford Thompson, and Jewelle Gomez
RSVP HERE
James Baldwin’s personal life and literary legacy are explored through his diverse life-long friendships and muses, his front-line political activism, and his cross-cultural connections and influences while living in Paris. This up close and intimate conversation includes British writer and former editor of the Times Literary Supplement James Campbell, author of Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin who knew Baldwin in Paris, Brooklyn based writer/essayist Clifford Thompson, What It Is: Race, Family and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues and host Bay Area writer/poet and playwright Jewelle Gomez, Waiting for Giovanni.
RSVP HERE

James Campbell is the author of This Is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris, Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and Others on the Left Bank, and Invisible Country: A Journey through Scotland, and was for many years an editor and columnist at the Times Literary Supplement in London.

Clifford Thompson’s work has appeared in publications including The Best American Essays 2018, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Threepenny Review, and Village Voice. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award for nonfiction and teaches at New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Bennington Writing Seminars. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jewelle Gomez, playwright, novelist, poet and cultural worker is the author of eight books including the first Black Lesbian vampyre novel, The Gilda Stories. Her trilogy of plays about African American artists in the first half of the 20th century, Waiting for Giovanni, Leaving the Blues, and Unpacking in P’Town was commissioned by New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco where she is playwright-in-residence. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @VampyreVamp.

RSVP HERE

Francis Bacon: Revelations
2021-06-15 19:30 - 20:30
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of De Kooning: An American Master, Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan present
Francis Bacon: Revelations
In Conversation with bestselling author and journalist Elaine Sciolino
RSVP HERE
Francis Bacon flung open the twentieth-century closet, creating an indelible image of mankind in modern times. From his public emergence with his legendary Triptych 1944 (its images “so unrelievedly awful” that people fled the gallery), to his death in Madrid in 1992, Bacon played an outsized role in both twentieth century art and life. By day he exposed the secrets of a dark century and by night, unabashed by his homosexuality, he swashbuckled through Soho.
Written with the full co-operation of the Bacon estate, unrivalled access to the archives and based on hundreds of interviews and extensive new material from Ireland, Tangier, Spain, England and France, this definitive biography presents a startlingly original portrait – rich, complex, and subtle – of a commanding modern figure.
Stevens and SwanRSVP HERE
Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens are authors of de Kooning: An American Master, a biography of Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning, which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the National Book Critics Circle prize for biography and the Los Angeles Times biography award. It was named one of the 10 best books of 2005 by the New York Times.
RSVP HERE
Sciolino
Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, based in France since 2002. Her latest book, The Seine: The River That Made Paris, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and a Barnes & Noble nonfiction book-of-the-month selection. Her previous book, The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs, published in 2015, was a New York Times best seller. Sciolino was decorated chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 2010 for her “special contribution” to the friendship between France and the United States.

Organized in partnership with Columbia Global Centers | Paris and The Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco

To Write as If Already Dead (Briggs & Zambreno)
2021-06-14 19:00 - 20:00
Join Columbia Global Centers (online) to discuss
To Write as If Already Dead
with author Kate Zambreno and translator Kate Briggs
RSVP HERE
To Write as if Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this diaristic, transgressive work, the first in a cycle written in the years preceding his death, Guibert documents with speed and intensity his diagnosis and disintegration from AIDS and elegizes a character based on Michel Foucault.
The first half of To Write as if Already Dead is a novella in the mode of a detective story, searching after the mysterious disappearance of an online friendship after an intense dialogue on anonymity, names, language, and connection. The second half, a notebook documenting the doubled history of two bodies amid another historical plague, continues the meditation on friendship, solitude, time, mortality, precarity, art, and literature.
Throughout this rigorous, mischievous, thrilling not-quite study, Guibert lingers as a ghost companion. Zambreno, who has been pushing the boundaries of literary form for a decade, investigates his methods by adopting them, offering a keen sense of the energy and confessional force of Guibert’s work, an ode to his slippery, scarcely classifiable genre. The book asks, as Foucault once did, “What is an author?” Zambreno infuses this question with new urgency, exploring it through the anxieties of the internet age, the ethics of friendship, and “the facts of the body”: illness, pregnancy, and death.
RSVP HERE
Kate Zambreno is the author of many acclaimed books, including Drifts (2020), Appendix Project (2019), Screen Tests (2019), Book of Mutter (2017), and Heroines (2012). Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction.

Kate Briggs is a writer and translator based in Rotterdam, NL, where she teaches on the Masters Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute. She is the translator of two lecture courses by Roland Barthes (How to Live Together and The Preparation of the Novel, both published by Columbia UP) and the author of This Little Art (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017) recently translated into Spanish by Rubén Martín Giráldez (Jekyll & Jill, 2020) and forthcoming in German by Sabine Voss (Ink Press, 2021). The Long Form, a novel-essay, is forthcoming with Fitzcarraldo Editions. She is the recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction.
RSVP HERE

My Place at the Table (Lobrano)
2021-06-09 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to discuss
My Place at the Table
with author Alec Lobrano
Click here to RSVP
A mouthwatering testament to the healing power of food, My Place at the Table is a moving coming-of-age story of how a gay man emerges from a wounding childhood, discovers himself, and finds love. Published here for the first time is Lobrano’s “little black book,” an insider’s guide to his thirty all-time-favorite Paris restaurants.
Click here to RSVP
Alec Lobrano

Until Alec Lobrano landed a job in the glamorous Paris office of Women’s Wear Daily, his main experience of French cuisine was the occasional supermarket éclair. An interview with the owner of a renowned cheese shop for his first article nearly proves a disaster because he speaks no French. As he goes on to cover celebrities and couturiers and improves his mastery of the language, he gradually learns what it means to be truly French. He attends a cocktail party with Yves St. Laurent and has dinner with Giorgio Armani. Over a superb lunch, it’s his landlady who ultimately provides him with a lasting touchstone for how to judge food: “you must understand the intentions of the cook.” At the city’s brasseries and bistros, he discovers real French cooking. Through a series of vivid encounters with culinary figures from Paul Bocuse to Julia Child to Ruth Reichl, Lobrano hones his palate and finds his voice. Soon the timid boy from Connecticut is at the epicenter of the Parisian dining revolution and the restaurant critic of one of the largest newspapers in the France.

Viet Thanh Nguyen at the Library
2021-06-02 19:30 - 20:30
Viet Thanh Nguyen presents
The Committed
RSVP HERE
“We were the unwanted, the unneeded, and the unseen, invisible to all but ourselves.”

And with these words, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s long-awaited new novel, The Committed, follows “the man of two faces and two minds,” from The Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris as a refugee. Presenting his novel to a French audience for the first time at the American Library in Paris, Nguyen will describe the work’s oft-forgotten historical backdrop: immigrant enclaves of drug lords, communist spies, and petty criminals in 1980s Paris.
Praised by the Guardian as a dense novel of ideas wrapped in a spy thriller, The Committed “invites the reader to think, not just to feel: to think deeply about political systems and ideologies, whose interests they serve and what, if any, answers they can provide.” Nguyen will be in conversation with author Grace Ly and journalist Pauline Lemasson about his writing process. The discussion will also touch on themes of identity, revolution and intellectualism.

RSVP HERE

Organized in partnership with Columbia Global Centers in Paris and The Mechanics’ Institute in San Francisco.

Hemingway and the Craft of Writing (Wolff & Braude)
2021-05-26 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to discuss
Hemingway and the Craft of Writing
with Tobias Wolff and Mark Braude
RSVP HERE
The Hemingway Stories features Ernest Hemingway’s most significant short stories so fans old and new can follow the trajectory of one of the greatest American writers of all time. The intimate portrait of Hemingway—who captured the complexities of the human condition in spare and profound prose, and whose work remains deeply influential—interweaves a close study of biographical events with excerpts from his work. Tobias Wolff’s introduction adds a new perspective that demonstrates Hemingway’s talent and range.
RSVP HERE
Tobias Wolff
Tobias Wolff is the author of the novels The Barracks Thief and Old School, the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, and the short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, Night in Question and, most recently, Our Story Begins. He is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rea Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper’s, among other magazines.
Mark Braude

Mark Braude is the author of The Invisible Emperor and Making Monte Carlo. He was a 2020 Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris, was named a Public Scholar by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has been a Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at Stanford University. His book about the French artist Kiki de Montparnasse’s entanglement with the American photographer Man Ray will be published soon by W.W. Norton.

How to Disagree, Productively (Leslie)
2021-05-25 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to understand
How to Disagree, Productively
with author Ian Leslie
RSVP HERE
In Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes, Leslie argues that we live in a world that primed for toxic disagreement, that we are not remotely prepared for this, and that we need to think of good disagreement as a skill that must be learnt. Drawing on insights from many different fields, his book offers a guide to how we can unlock the immense benefits of disagreement, at home, at work and in the public realm.
RSVP HERE

Ian Leslie is a writer, speaker and author of books on human behaviour, including Born Liars, on lying and self-deception, Curious, on the trait of curiosity, and Conflicted, on the art and science of productive disagreement.

Master Shot Film Club (ages 12–18) [VIRTUAL; RSVP REQUIRED]
2021-05-22 17:00 - 18:30
For ages 12–18

Aspiring filmmakers, writers and actors are invited to join the Master Shot Film Club at the Library. Led by Paris-based filmmaker and writer Clarence Tokley, the purpose of this club is to allow budding filmmakers the opportunity to meet in a relaxed and creative setting where you can share your ideas, get feedback and work on your technique, while learning about how to produce high quality short films.

The Master Shot Film Club provides a space for teens to explore all aspects of film-making, including the development and production process, script-writing, camera work, directing, editing and much more, not to mention that you’ll get to know other young filmmakers in the community!
You’re welcome to bring in questions and projects you need help on during any meeting. You may also email Clarence with your film-making questions: c1tokley@yahoo.com

About Clarence Tokley:
Clarence Tokley is a Paris-based teacher, filmmaker, and writer. A native of New Jersey, Clarence attended Rutgers University, obtaining a degree in History and Film Studies. Clarence then attended the New York Film Academy in New York City, before packing up everything and moving to Paris—he wanted to get a taste of the European style of storytelling. He fully immersed himself in the film industry and quickly landed his first job in Paris. Some of his credits include Rush Hour 3, Truth in 24, Exes, and the Cherry Orchard. Clarence also does voice-over work in Paris. Along with his duties as teacher of the BAW Teen and Youth Acting courses, he is the director of camps in France and provides workshops and private coaching. When he’s not teaching or coaching, Clarence continues to work professionally in film and theater productions in and around Paris.

Participation in this club is free for Library members, but an application is required. Apply HERE for the 2020-2021 Master Shot Film Club.

Questions about collections and programs for teens can be sent to the Library’s Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Fantasy Book Club: Shadow and Bone (ages 12–Adult) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-22 16:00 - 17:00
Join fantasy fans to discuss new worlds and novels with like-minded readers.

Click here to register.

Join us (virtually) for an animated discussion each month of the latest and greatest fantasy reads. Participants are also encouraged to prepare a cup of tea or coffee to enjoy during the meeting. This book club is facilitated by Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager (and fantasy fan) Celeste Rhoads. New members are always welcome!

In May, we’ll be reading and discussing Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo.

Advance registration is required for this book group. Once registered, participants will be sent an email with instructions to join the online meeting. Participation in this book group is open to Library members, and free of charge. If you are not yet a Library member, but would like to participate, please join the Library before the first session. Send an email to Celeste Rhoads, our Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, with questions about this event: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

Sherlock in the Library (ages 6–12) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-22 14:00 - 15:00
For ages 6–12
CLICK HERE TO RSVP
Join us for an online interactive mystery game! Pit your wits against the greatest detective of them all: Sherlock Holmes!

This live, interactive virtual event will be hosted on Zoom. Detectives ages 6-12 (of all abilities or experience) can join Children’s and Teen’s Librarian Kirsty for an afternoon of entertaining puzzles and challenges. Some involve riddles, some will include plays on words, and some will require you to use your skills of observation. See if you can be a Sherlock and solve them all!

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email link to join us via Zoom. Registration closes 24 hours before the event.

Can’t make it to this live virtual event? Check out our curated list of online resources for children. If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.
CLICK HERE TO RSVP

How to Do Nothing (Odell)
2021-05-19 19:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to discuss
How to Do Nothing
with writer, artist and Stanford professor Jenny Odell
Click here to RSVP
In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, How to Do Nothing is an inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy and winning back our lives. Once we start paying a new kind of attention, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
Click here to RSVP
Jenny Odell

Jenny Odell is an Oakland-based multi-disciplinary artist and writer. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Paris Review. Her visual work has been exhibited in the United States at The Contemporary Jewish Museum and the New York Public Library, as well as internationally in France, China and Dubai. Odell has been an artist in residence at Facebook, the Internet Archive, the San Francisco Planning Department, and Recology SF. She is a lecturer in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University.

The New Parisienne (Tramuta & Collins)
2021-05-18 19:00 - 21:00
Join Columbia Global Centers (online) to discuss
The New Parisienne
with Linsdey Tramuta and Lauren Collins
RSVP HERE
What does it mean to be a Parisian woman in the 21st century? To mark the French-language release of writer and journalist Lindsey Tramuta’s myth-busting book The New Parisienne: The Women and Ideas Shaping Paris, or La Nouvelle Parisienne in French, join us for a conversation between Tramuta and New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins (author of “When in French”) on how women in Paris are forging the way for a more progressive city, the diversity and creativity of the modern woman in the French capital, and why it’s time to say au revoir to the outdated archetype of the Parisian woman.
Lindsey Tramuta
Lindsey Tramuta is an American culture & travel journalist and podcaster. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Fortune, Conde Nast Traveler, among other news and travel publications. Her first book, The New Paris: the People, Places & Ideas Fueling a Movement, was published in 2017. Her book, The New Parisienne: the Women & Ideas Shaping Paris, was published last year and features more than 40 women challenging the “French Girl” trope. Lindsey’s podcast, The New Paris podcast, continues the conversations and themes explored in both books.

Lauren Collins
Lauren Collins has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008. Her subjects have included Michelle Obama, Donatella Versace, Emmanuel Macron, the refugee crisis, and equal pay. Since 2015, she has been based in Paris, covering stories mainly from France. 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 over the past hundred and twenty years.
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A Parisian Scavenger Hunt with Katelyn Aronson, author of Piglette (ages 3-9) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-15 11:00 - 12:00
For ages 3–9
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3–9 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for a reading with author Katelyn Aronson as she reads her picture book Piglette, about a pig who finds a way to bring a little Parisian perfection back home to her pasture. Katelyn will be joined by illustrator Eva Byrne, who will show participants how to draw a very chic pig!

“Accompanied by pleasant, warm cartoons depicting family, friendship, and a little adventure, Piglette’s story is a joyful one that makes for an amusing read-aloud. A sweet, lighthearted tale of a piglet discovering where she belongs.”–Kirkus Reviews

This live, interactive virtual event will be hosted on Zoom. Library programs are created to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Download the scavenger hunt ahead of time here, and complete it as we read the story. Plan to join in, as you would do in one of our in-person events and participate in a virtual scavenger hunt as we Katelyn reads the story. We will keep microphones muted during the reading and art demonstration, then participating children will be encouraged to turn on their microphones and ask questions during the Q&A portion of the event.

Katelyn Aronson
About Katelyn Aronson: Katelyn grew up in a home where reading was more of a shared activity than a solo one. Her mother was a children’s literature lover; her father—a natural-born storyteller. TV wasn’t a big part of life. Make-believe was, and words were just another way of creating magic, together. One day, Katelyn realized voilà! She had a few stories of her own, ready to be shared. Find out more Katelyn Aronson and her work here.

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email link to join us via Zoom. Registration closes 24 hours before the event.

Can’t make it to this live virtual event? Check out our curated list of online resources for children. If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.

CLICK HERE TO RSVP

Dhonielle Clayton on writing (ages 12-18) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-14 19:00 - 20:00
For ages 12–18

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
Join us for a virtual event with author Dhonielle Clayton as she discusses her work, and her writing process, as well as her work with We Need Diverse Books. Then Clayton will take questions from participants.

About Dhonielle Clayton: Dhonielle Clayton spent most of her childhood under her grandmother’s dining room table with a stack of books. She hails from the Washington, D.C. suburbs on the Maryland side, but now lives in New York City. Clayton is the author of The Belles, The Everlasting Rose, Tiny Pretty Things, Shiny Broken Pieces, and A Universe of Wishes. Her forthcoming novels are BlackOut, Shattered Midnight, The Marvellers, and The Rumor Game. She holds an MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University and an MFA Writing for Children at the New School. Clayton is also COO of the non-profit We Need Diverse Books, an organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter: @brownbookworm, and you can find out more about her on her website.

Advance registration is required for this event. This event is open to Library members and students in partner schools, and free of charge. Once registered, participants will be sent an email with instructions to join the event. If you are not yet a Library member, but would like to participate, please join the Library.

Questions about collections and programs for teens can be sent to the Library’s Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager, Celeste Rhoads: celeste@americanlibraryinparis.org.

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.

The Question of Belonging (Handal)
2021-05-12 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) to meditate on
Migration, Identity and Home
with French-American poet Nathalie Handal
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Life in a Country Album
Life in a Country Album by Nathalie Handal brings together her fierce intellect and passionate sensuality to create a meditation on migration, identity, and home. The question of belonging lies at the heart of the collection: who gets to decide who belongs? Can you be exiled from your own sense of self? In its clarity, craft and chimeric language, it is a love letter and admonition mailed by the same stamp. In this, her seventh collection, Nathalie Handal reaffirms that she remains an urgent and singular voice in contemporary poetry. Claire Messud writes, she “illuminates the luxuriance and longing of deracination—a contemporary Orpheus.”
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Nathalie Handal
Nathalie Handal is a French-American poet and writer whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Guernica Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times, among others. Handal’s rich, diverse, and innovative body of work reflects her own multicultural, multilingual, and multinational life.

Oliver Gee and Lina Nordin Gee reading "Kylie the Crocodile in Paris" (ages 3–9) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-06 17:00 - 18:00
For ages 3–9
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.
3–9 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for a reading with author Oliver Gee and illustrator Lina Nordin Gee as they read their new picture book Kylie the Crocodile in Paris. Following the reading, Lina will show participants how to draw a crocodile and then the pair will answer questions about what inspired this “absolutely true story.”
This live, interactive virtual event will be hosted on Zoom. Library programs are created to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Plan to join in, as you would do in one of our in-person events. We will keep microphones muted during the reading and art demonstration, then participating children will be encouraged to turn on their microphones and ask questions during the Q&A portion of the event.

About Oliver Gee and Lina Nordin Gee: Oliver Gee is the creator of the award-winning podcast about Paris and France, The Earful Tower. He used to be a full-time journalist in Paris, but switched to podcasting in December 2017. Lina Nordin Gee runs a chic shoe and handbag company, Deuxième Studios, and likes to draw and paint. You can see her illustrations on Instagram @ParisianPostcards. Find out more about The Earful Tower or purchase your own copy of Kylie the Crocodile in Paris here.

This virtual event is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email link to join us via Zoom. Registration closes 24 hours before the event.

Can’t make it to this live virtual event? Check out our curated list of online resources for children. If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.

An Unlikely Resistance Campaign (Jackson)
2021-05-05 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) as we host historian and author
Jeffrey H. Jackson
on Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis
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Paper Bullets is the first book to tell the true story of an anti-Nazi resistance campaign undertaken by an unlikely pair. Two French women –– Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe (better known today by their artistic names Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore) –– drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute hundreds of notes, songs, poems, and drawings designed to demoralize German troops occupying their adopted home of Jersey in the Channel Islands. To do so, they assumed the identity of a Nazi soldier, calling themselves “The Soldier With No Name.”
As the war continued, they escalated their actions, often putting themselves at great personal risk all the while pretending to be one of the enemy. Lucy and Suzanne were in danger because of who they were: lesbian partners known for cross-dressing and their gender-bending photography back in Paris, Lucy’s Jewish heritage, and their communist affiliations. Jackson’s story takes readers inside the day-to-day struggles of civilians surviving in occupied territory and facing tough, sometimes gut-wrenching, choices.
Jeffrey H. Jackson
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Jeffrey H. Jackson is Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His most recent book, Paper Bullets, was longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and selected as an Editor’s Choice “Best of the Best” for 2020 by the American Library Association’s publication Booklist. He is also the author of Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 and Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris, both of which have been received with high acclaim.

Story Hour: Snails and Slugs (ages 3–5) [Virtual Event, Library members only; RSVP Required]
2021-05-05 14:30 - 15:30
For ages 3–5
CLICK HERE TO RSVP.
3–5 year-olds and their grown-ups are invited to join us for our weekly interactive Wednesday Story Hour! This virtual program lasts 45 minutes and features songs, stories and hand rhymes in English, and is hosted by our children’s librarians and volunteers.
For this Story Hour, we’ll read tales of snails and slugs—both factual and fictional—that are full of surprises, including Snail Crossing by Corey R. Tabor.

This Story Hour will be hosted by Children’s and Teens’ Services Manager Celeste, along with volunteers Mary Wessels and Samuel Kuria, who will read books and lead you and your little one in songs and hand-rhymes during an interactive, live, virtual session. This participatory program is intended to encourage children to actively engage with stories. Plan to join in, sing along, and move around, as you would do in one of our in-person events. If you join in this virtual session, it will be as important as ever to model movement and song for your little one.

This virtual Story Hour is free for Library members, and registration is required. Registered participants will be sent an email link to join us via Zoom. Registration closes 24 hours before the event.

Can’t make it to this live virtual event? Check out our curated list of online resources for children. If you would like to support the Library and our services, you can donate here to help sustain this vital institution in its 100th year of service.

On Dialogue, Friendship and Literature (Williams & Garrett)
2021-05-04 19:30 - 20:30
Join Evenings with an Author (online) as long-time friends
Rowan Williams and Greg Garrett
discuss the issues of the day, dialogue, friendship, family, literature, and life.
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Rowan Williams served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and is a towering intellectual and moral figure in Britain. The author of over two dozen books on faith, politics, literature, language, and ethics, Lord Williams recently retired as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Greg Garrett is Professor of English at Baylor University and serves as Theologian in Residence at the American Cathedral in Paris. He too has published over two dozen books, including novels, memoir, and nonfiction exploring narrative, racism, politics, faith, and popular culture.
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Evenings with an Author: Kristin Harmel in conversation with Lauren Elkin [Virtual Public Event; RSVP Required]
2021-04-28 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 New York Times-bestselling author Kristin Harmel. She will share her novel, The Book of Lost Names, in conversation with fellow author Lauren Elkin. Programs Manager Alice McCrum will draw on live questions from the audience.
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying newspaper article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II, which Eva remembers well as a Jewish war refugee from Paris. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Eva knows the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
About the authors:
Kristin Harmel
Kristin Harmel is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names, The Winemaker’s Wife, The Room on Rue Amélie, The Sweetness of Forgetting and a dozen other novels that have been translated into 28 languages. Her new book, The Forest of Vanishing Stars, will be released in July 2021. She is also the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series Friends and Fiction. She lives in Orlando, Florida.

Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is the author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, a Radio 4 Book of the Week and a finalist for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the Art of the Essay. Her next book, 91/92: A Diary of a Year on the Bus will be out in September 2021 from Semiotext(e)/Les Fugitives, as will her translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novel The Inseparables (Vintage Classics).
CLICK HERE TO RSVP and receive the Zoom login information.
