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.
