Instructors
John Biguenet
John Biguenet is the widely acclaimed author of The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories and Oyster, a novel. His stories have appeared in such magazines as Granta, Esquire, Playboy, Story, and Zoetrope and been presented in "Selected Shorts" at Symphony Space on Broadway. He is the author of three plays, Wundmale, The Vulgar Soul, and Rising Water, which won the National New Play Network Commission Award. His new play, Shotgun, premiered at Southern Rep Theatre in 2009. Another new play, Night Train, was developed at the National Theatre in London this past year. An O. Henry Award winner for his short fiction and a New York Times guest columnist, he is the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Rolf Potts
Dubbed "Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age" by USA Today, Potts' essays and reportage have appeared in such venues as the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, Slate.com, National Geographic Traveler, the Travel Channel, and National Public Radio — as well as over a 20 nonfiction anthologies, including the Best American Travel Writing series and the Best Creative Nonfiction series. He has won five Lowell Thomas Awards for his travel writing, and his first book, Vagabonding, has been translated into four languages. In 2009, his newest book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, became the first American-authored travel book to win Italy's prestigious Bruce Chatwin Award. This will be his ninth summer of teaching at the Paris American Academy.
Lauren Grodstein
Lauren Grodstein is the author of the short story collection The Best of Animals (Persea, '02) and Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, a novel (Dial, '04). Her new novel, A Friend of the Family, was published by Algonquin in 2009. Her essays, stories, and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Ontario Review, and several anthologies. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Camden, where she helps direct the new MFA in creative writing.
Visiting Writer
Jeffrey Tayler
Visiting writer Jeffrey Tayler is a contributing editor at the Atlantic Monthly, and the author of six travel books, including Facing the Congo, which was nominated for a Pulitzer and voted as one of the "Top 30 Travel Books of All Time" by the Travel Channel's WorldHum.com. Tayler has also written for National Geographic, Harper's, Conde Nast Traveler, Smithsonian and Spin. His 2007 story for Men's Journal, "A Long Slow Paddle into the Violent Heart of the Congo," was nominated for a National Magazine Award, and four of his stories have been selected for various editions of the Best American Travel Writing. Outtakes from Tayler's 2006, 2008 and 2009 Paris American Academy lectures were published by World Hum under the titles "Killing Yourself to Make a Living", "Insanity and the Traveling Life", and "Travel Writing and L'Esprit Frondeur." He is based in Russia.
Guest Lecturers
Because Paris attracts (and is home to) writers and artists from all over the world, each summer's writing workshop features an eclectic slate of guest lecturers — including poets, journalists, screenwriters, travel writers, editors, publishers, literary agents, photographers, filmmakers, performers, and historians. Guests in recent years have included literary agents Julie Barer and Sarah Jane Freymann; poets Marvin Bell, Peter Cooley, and Stuart Dischell; novelists Binnie Kirschenbaum, Irina Reyn, and Thomas Fox Averill; memoirists Philip Lopate, Eddy L. Harris, and Elisabeth Eaves; critic and blogger Jessa Crispin; film composer Rolfe Kent; and travel writers Elliott Hester and Rory MacLean.
To start the application process, send an email to: info@pariswritingworkshop.com