Instructors

John BiguenetJohn Biguenet

John Biguenet is the widely acclaimed author of The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories and Oyster, a novel. His stories and poems have appeared in such magazines as Granta, Esquire, North American Review, Playboy, Story, and Zoetrope, as well as a number of anthologies. He is the author of several plays, including Wundmale (for German radio), The Vulgar Soul, Shotgun, and Rising Water, which won the National New Play Network Commission Award. Another of his plays, Night Train, was developed at the National Theatre in London and debuted in the U.S. in 2011. He has two new plays premiering in 2013. 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.

Lise FunderbergLise Funderburg

Lise Funderburg is the author of a bestselling memoir, Pig Candy, which was chosen to be the 2012 Freshman Summer Read at Drexel University. She is author of Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity, which has become a core text in the study of American multiracial identity and is used in college courses around the world. Her essays and articles have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, The Nation, MORE, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Garden Design, GourmetLive, and Salon.com. Recent awards include a fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, inclusion in Best African American Essays 2010, and a Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A graduate of Reed College and the Columbia University School of Journalism, she teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lauren GrodsteinLauren Grodstein

Lauren Grodstein is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family, along with the novel Reproduction is the Flaw of Love and the story collection The Best of Animals. Her new novel, The Explanation for Everything, will be published by Algonquin in September of 2013. Her essays, stories, and reviews have been published in Columbia, Post Road, and the New York Times, among others, and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. She directs the MFA program at Rutgers University, Camden.

Rolf PottsRolf Potts

Rolf Potts' essays and reportage have appeared in such venues as the New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, 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. His newest book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, was the first American-authored travel book to win Italy's prestigious Bruce Chatwin Award. Potts teaches nonfiction writing at Yale University, and he has served as the Paris American Academy writing workshop program director since 2005.

 

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 Stuart Dischell, Marvin Bell and Peter Cooley; 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 Jeffrey Tayler, Elliott Hester and Rory MacLean.

To start the application process, send an email to: info@pariswritingworkshop.com