Faculty, Presenters and Special Guest 2010
Sheila Kohler
Sheila Kohler is the author of seven novels, most recently: Becoming Jane Eyre, Bluebird or the Invention of Happiness, Children of Pithiviers, Crossways, and Cracks, and three collections of short stories. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous revues. Among her awards are: two O.Henry's, the Open Voice Award, the Smart Family Foundation. Sheila Kohler has taught creative writing at Bennington, City College, The Chenango Valley Conference at Colgate, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, Suny Purchase, the West side YMCA, and in Montolieu, France and Columbia university, at Brooklyn College and now teaches at Princeton.
Alice Notley
Alice Notley has published over thirty books of poetry, including (most recently) Grave of Light, New and Selected Poems 1970-2005; Alma, or The Dead Women; and In the Pines. With her sons, Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, Notley edited The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan. She is also the author of a book of essays on poets and poetry, Coming After. Notley has received many prizes and awards including the Academy of American Poets' Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of AmericaÕs Shelley Award, the Griffin Prize, two NEA Grants, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. Often considered an important figure in the New York School, Notley now lives and writes in Paris, France.
Kevin Jackson
Kevin Jackson, British writer, broadcaster, film-maker, and lecturer, has written or edited 23 books and over 2,000 articles, reviews, features on film, photography, modern art, literature, language, and cultural history for The New Yorker, The American Scholar, Vogue, Harper's, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, The Guardian and numerous other publications. He frequently works as a consultant and series editor for radio and television and has a regular monthly column on the British Radio 3's The Verb. He is Visiting Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of London. His most recent books include: Moose (Reaktion, 2009), Bite: A Vampire Handbook (Portobello, 2009), and The Worlds of John Ruskin (Pallas Athene/Ruskin Foundation, 2010).
Matt Thorne
Matt Thorne is the author of 6 novels: Tourist, Eight Minutes Idle and winner of the 2000 Encore Award; Dreaming of Strangers Pictures of You; Child Star; and Cherry. He is also a book reviewer for national newspapers, including the Independent on Sunday, and writes screenplays and radio drama. He has published a series of books for young adults (39 Castles) about a group of children in a futuristic England which resembles medieval England, the latest in the series being The White Castle. In 2000, he founded 'The New Puritans', a group who pledge to bring simplicity and relevance back to contemporary British fiction, and edited with Nicholas Blincoe an anthology of fiction entitled All Hail the New Puritans. Thorne is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University in London.
Christine Buckley
Christine Buckley's travels have taken her to five continents and taught her to shear sheep, cultivate rice, sail without a G.P.S. and edit a state-run newspaper with a straight face. Her LA Weekly cover story on human rights activist Aaron Cohen was a 2008 LA Press Club and Maggie Award finalist and led to the book Slave Hunter: One Man's Quest to Free Victims of Human Trafficking, co-written with Cohen (Simon & Schuster). Christine has contributed to National Public Radio, The New York Times, New American Media, Russian Newsweek and Current TV, among many others. Her reporting has also won her an Associated Press award. Born in New York, she is currently based in Paris, where she works as a journalist for Radio France. She is working on a second book based on a piece recently selected for Best Women's Travel Writing 2010.
Janet Skeslien Charles
Janet Skeslien Charles' debut novel Moonlight in Odessa (Bloomsbury 2009) was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of their top ten debut novels of Fall 2009 and it is shortlisted for the 2010 Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance. It was Book of the Month in the September issue of National Geographic Traveler. BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime featured Moonlight in Odessa for two weeks in February 2010. Moonlight is Odessa has been favorably reviewed in The New York Times and The Guardian among others. Foreign language rights have been sold in 12 countries. Janet has led writing workshops at the American Library in Paris, WICE, and Shakespeare & Co and is currently working on her second novel.
Gretel Furner
Gretel Furner studied French and German literature at Oxford and wrote her Ph. D. on the modern novel. She has lived and worked in England, Germany, North and South America and is now settled in Paris where she has been teaching for WICE since 2004. She taught at the George Washington University and the John Hopkins School of International Studies in Washington D.C. She currently runs seminars and writing groups for the international community in Paris.
Ann Mah
Ann Mah's first novel, Kitchen Chinese (HarperCollins 2010), was based loosely upon her experiences living in Beijing for four years. Her articles about food, travel, fashion, style and the arts have appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, the International Herald Tribune, Washingtonian Magazine, the South China Morning Post, the Insider's Guide to Beijing, and other publications. She began her career in book publishing, eventually becoming an assistant editor at Viking Penguin in New York. From 2003-2007 she lived in Beijing, where she was a staff writer and dining editor for That's Beijing, an English-language entertainment magazine. In 2005, she was awarded a James Beard culinary scholarship to study in Bologna, Italy.
Paul Schmidtberger
Paul Schmidtberger is the author of the novel Design Flaws of the Human Condition (Doubleday / Broadway Publishing Group, 2007). Paul's debut novel explores anger, betrayal, loyalty and friendship with compassion and a wickedly irreverent sense of humor. A Yale College and Stanford Law School Graduate and member of the California State Bar, Paul practiced law for ten years and lived in Japan and San Francisco before moving to Paris to write. Movie rights for Design Flaws of the Human Condition were recently optioned. Paul's articles have appeared in numerous law journals as well as the New York Times.
Laurel Zuckerman
Laurel Zuckerman is the author of Sorbonne Confidential and Les Rêves Barbares du Professeur Collie. An HEC graduate and long-time resident of France, Laurel's wickedly humorous account of her attempt to pass an elite exam for English teachers caused uproar here. Her essays and interviews have appeared in Hommes et Commerces, Cahiers Pédagogiques, The Paris Times, Le Point, Le Monde, Le Monde de l'Education, The Guardian, The Times, as well as on France 24, TF1, RFI, and the BBC. A former e-procurement systems specialist, Laurel edits Paris Writers News and talent scouts for a new publishing venture.
Paula Butturini
"Food has always been my lens and prism, my eye on the world," writes Paula Butturini in Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy. A former correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, Butturini lives in Paris with her husband, New York Times reporter John Tagliabue, and the couple's 12-year-old daughter, Julia. Her memoir delves deeply into personal tragedy while celebrating the role food and its pleasures played in her family's recovery. Much of the drama takes place in Italy, where Butturini honed her skills as shopper, meal planner, and chef.
Mission Statement
The Paris Writers Workshop is committed to providing inspiration and high-level instruction on craft to writers of all skill levels in a supportive environment. The PWW celebrates the diversity of voices within its community of writers.
The Paris Writers' Workshop is organized by WICE, a non-profit, organization founded in 1978 that offers innovative, educational courses and programs for the Anglophone community in Paris.
Click HERE for more information about WICE.
The Listing
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