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. He is the author of several plays, including Wundmale, The Vulgar Soul, Shotgun, and Rising Water, which won the National New Play Network Commission Award. His newest play, Night Train, was developed at the National Theatre in London and debuted in 2011. 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 Funderburg
Lise Funderburg is the author of a memoir, Pig Candy, and the editor of the oral history collection Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity, which has become a core text in the study of American multiracial identity, and has been used in college courses around the world. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, and Salon.com. She has been a regular contributor since 2001 to O, The Oprah Magazine. A graduate of Reed College and the Columbia University School of Journalism, she teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.
Lauren Grodstein
Lauren Grodstein's novel A Friend of the Family made several "Best Of" lists in 2009 and 2010, and has been optioned for the big screen by the producers of The Prestige. Her first novel was Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, and she is also the author of a short story collection, The Best of Animals. 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. Her next novel will be published by Algonquin in late 2012 or early 2013.
Rolf Potts
Dubbed "Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age" by USA Today, Rolf Potts' essays and reportage have appeared in such venues as the New Yorker, 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.
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, 2009, and 2010 Paris American Academy lectures were published by World Hum under the titles "Killing Yourself to Make a Living", "Insanity and the Traveling Life", "Travel Writing and L'Esprit Frondeur", and "Journey to Ithaca." 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