2019 Library Book Award submissions

This is the seventh year of the American Library in Paris Book Award, recognizing the most distinguished books of the year, in English, about France. In this cycle, eighty-two titles were submitted by authors, publishers, and others for consideration.

The Book Award, which carries a $5,000 prize, is supported by generous funding from the Florence Gould Foundation. A Paris-based screening committee will select five or six finalists for the 2019 prize. The winning title will be chosen by this year’s independent jury: Alice Kaplan, professor of French at Yale University and author of seven books, including Looking for the Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic; New York Times Magazine contributing writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd and the forthcoming Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race; and Pamela Druckerman, Paris-based New York Times columnist and author of There Are No Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story and four other books.

The Book Award laureate will be announced in the presence of the winning author and Library supporters at an invitation-only ceremony in Paris in November. If you are interested in becoming a patron of the Book Award ceremony, or have questions about the prize, please write the Book Award administrator, Charles Trueheart, at bookaward@americanlibraryinparis.org.

All the submissions for the 2019 Book Award are in the Library’s circulating collection and are available for checkout by members.