Anne Korkeakivi, author of An Unexpected Guest, to speak at The American Library in Paris Oct 10

“Serious geopolitics mixes with parenthood and the finer points of entertaining... Like her protagonist, Korkeakivi’s writing is cool, calm and composed." - The New York Times

Wed 10 October 2012  19h30

Evenings with an Author: Anne Korkeakivi The American Library in Paris 10, rue du Général Camou 75007 Paris, France

On a lovely spring day in Paris – post-9/11 and several months after the London Underground bombings — Clare Moorhouse, the Irish-American wife of a high-ranking British diplomat, is arranging an official dinner crucial to her husband’s career. As she shops for fresh stalks of asparagus and works out the menu and seating arrangements, her day is complicated by the abrupt arrival of her son from boarding school in England and a random encounter with a man on the street, who may be a suspected terrorist. More unnerving still is a recurring face in the crowd, one that belonged to another, darker era of her life. But it can’t be him…

Like Virginia Woolf did in Mrs. Dalloway, Anne Korkeakivi brilliantly weaves the complexities of an age into an act as deceptively simple as hosting a dinner party.

About the author

Anne Korkeakivi is the author of An Unexpected Guest (Little, Brown; April 2012). Her short fiction has been published by the Atlantic, the YaleReview, the Bellevue Literary Review, the Brooklyn Review, and other magazines, and in 2011 she was made a Hawthornden Fellow. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times (U.K.), the Village Voice, Gourmet, Travel & Leisure, Ms., and many other periodicals in the U.S. and the U.K. She was raised in New York City and western Massachusetts, and currently lives in Switzerland with her husband, who is a human rights lawyer at the U.N. in Geneva, and two daughters. Other places she's lived include France and Finland.

Read the Kirkus review of An Unexpected Guest and see more on Anne's website.

WICE to offer class in writing about Paris

Thursdays October 4, 11, 18, 25

Course Description: For so many, Paris is less a place than a dream, an icon of romance and beauty infused with all manner of improbable hopes and impossible desires. For those of us who live here, however, Paris is a very real and sometimes gritty city, the backdrop for the evolving dramas of our daily lives. How to write about Paris – and our lives here –  especially when our reality does not conform to the fervent expectations of others? In this four part series, mixing classwork with writing exercises, we will learn from the masters and explore avenues for writing about Paris in ways that are both fresh and personal.

Instructor: Laurel Zuckerman is the director of Best Paris Stories and the editor of Paris Writers News. Her books include Sorbonne Confidential (Fayard) and Les Rêves Barbares du Professeur Collie (Fay

WO041 Parisian Lives

• Start
  04 Oct 2012
•  
  3:00 PM
• End
  25 Oct 2012
•  
  5:00 PM
• Location
  WICE 10 rue Tiphaine 75015 Paris; Métro:La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle; Bus: 80.

Registration

• Full Course WO041 - €115.00 (EUR)

Best Paris Stories authors to read at PAN Art Show in Montmartre

September 11 at 6:30 pm: Marie Houzelle and Jane M Handel will read from the witty "Hortense on a Tuesday Night" and "The Way You Looked at Me" in a special event to celebrate the PAN art show.

The art show is organized by the Paris Alumnae Netwok and is open to the public. It is held  in a wonderful cosy gallery in Montmartre in "annex 2" across from the famous Paris café "Au Bon Coin" - Annex 2, 29 rue Montcalm, 75018 Paris.

For more information about the Paris Alumnae Network Art Show:

In a friendly, cosy gallery in Montmartre from September 7 through September 15, 2012 - 11 am to 7 pm every day.

Join the Artists for the opening or closing parties:
Vernissage: Friday, September 7, 2012 - 7 - 10 pm
Finissage: Saturday, September 15, 2012 - 4 - 8 pm

Reading from Best Paris Stories with Marie Houzelle and Jane M Handel: September 11 6:30-7:30pm

Au Bon Coin - Annex 2, 29 rue Montcalm, 75018 Paris.

For full details and party sign-up contact person: Sophie Le Cam sophielecam   AT     yahoo.com (by email only).

Best Paris Stories is honored to be featured in the August 2012 FUSAC, France USA Contacts

France USA Contacts started out nearly 25 years ago as an eight page free classified ad publication which offered jobs and services for the English speaking public in Paris, as well as fun (and useful) language games. It now boasts 60,000 regular readers and the best distribution network in Paris.

Best Paris Stories is immensely pleased and honored to be featured in FUSAC's summer issue (page 34).  

Paper copies of FUSAC can be picked up free all over Paris in restaurants, bookstores, hotels - and even the American Consulate. And one can also read FUSAC online or download the PDF from their website.

In this month's edition, you can read excerpts from four stories:  "A Pinch of Tarragon" by Lisa Burkitt; "The Baker of Vaugirard" by Jim Archibald; "Our Pharmacy" by Nafkote Tamirat; and "Frank Stands His Ground, in Belleville" by Mary Byrne

Thank you FUSAC for helping readers to discover Best Paris Stories!

Review "a deeply French yet idiosyncratic sensibility" Hortense on Tuesday Night

How to cope with the sexual revolution in Paris? A time when women in heterosexual couples are a "sorry, forgotten minority".  - Witty and original, Hortense on Tuesday Night introduces a remarkable new voice.

Named a "top five story" by Narrative Magazine!

“Hortense on Tuesday Nights”- had a sparse, mysterious quality which engaged me. The point of view was culturally ambiguous - and distinctly un-American - which I found refreshing. – judge Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, With Recipes

Houzelle's voice is surely unique: a deeply French yet idiosyncratic sensibility filtered through an English that's fluid, penetrating and all her own. "Hortense" takes the reader into a vividly rendered moment in feminist conscious-raising, and even more vividly into the personal perspective of a young woman exploring the new horizons and unexpected pitfalls of relationships among women. Acute, funny and unblinking. - (FIVE STARS) Amazon reviewer 

An Amazon Kindle Short Story from Best Paris Stories: Free today on Amazon Kindle Ebook

About Marie Houzelle
Born in the south of France, Marie Houzelle writes in English. Her stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Pharos, Orbis, Serre-Feuilles, Van Gogh's Ear, and in the chapbook No Sex Last Noon.  She's just finished a novel, Tita, about a seven-year-old girl who reads Stendhal and Proust as well as Sophie's Misfortunes and Marjorie Morningstar.

Short Story: "Our Pharmacy" by Naftkote Tamirat

How to survive in Paris?

"...The pharmacy was Alga’s idea. She had been taking advantage of her free healthcare and a doctor with sympathy to spare by going in for various medical exams almost every week.."


Two African women invent a desperate business plan for survival: "medicine for cheap with people who understand; we don’t need papers and we don’t give them out either.” 


 "Our Pharmacy" - a short story by Nafkote Tamirat, on Amazon Kindle : France  USA  UK,  a Best Paris Stories selection

Best Paris Stories paperback at The Red Wheelbarrow in Paris

If you are looking for the paperback of Best Paris Stories, you can now find it at The Red Wheelbarrow bookshop in Paris! 22, rue St Paul 75001 Many other terrific books also available!

BEST PARIS STORIES by Jeannine Alter, Jim Archibald,  Lisa Burkitt, Mary Byrne, Jane M. Handel, Marie Houzelle, Bob Levy, Julia Mary Lichtblau, Jo Nguyen, Nafkote Tamirat 

ISBN: 9780982369852   210 pages  Trim size: 5.06 x 7.81 in or 198 x 129 mm 

For some, Paris is home, for others, merely a dream. For Gaston, it is a bench, the anchor of his life. For Sue, a romantic city filled with scandalous, dark-eyed men, for Frank an all-consuming fire, for Mme Santinelli a ghost she'd hoped to forget.

By turns humorous, bittersweet, historical or surreal, each of these carefully selected stories invites us to explore a different facet of Paris.

Exciting new voices from the winners of the 2011 Paris Short Story Contest - Paris Writers News

SELECTED BY DISTINGUISHED JUDGES 

I chose "The Way You Looked at Me" for its graceful writing and general subject - our differing points of view - and for its powers of observation, and astute cross-cultural detail.  (JUDGE DIANE JOHNSON, author of Le Divorce)

“Hortense on Tuesday Nights” had a sparse, mysterious quality which engaged me. The point of view was culturally ambiguous - and distinctly Un-American - which I found refreshing. (JUDGE ELIZABETH BARD, author of Lunch in Paris: a Love Story with Recipes) 

I liked the story for its realism, its knowing voice, its discreet sense of humor, its successful reliance on dialogue, and its confidence in its own originality.  (JUDGE CHARLES TRUEHEART, on “Our Pharmacy” by Nafkote Tamirat)

I chose “My Sunday with God” because, in addition to being well written and having a strong voice, it felt very fresh to me. (JUDGE ANNE KORKEAKIVI, author of An Unexpected Guest) 

When reading this story, I was struck by the narrator's voice, which took me to other times and other places. I admired how the author shed light on the plight of immigrants who come to France and the harsh realities they encounter on the way. (JUDGE JANET SKESLIEN CHARLES, author of Moonlight in Odessa, on “Brazzaville – Belleville Express” by Jo Nguyen

This is a story whose characters emotionally hooked us and we wanted to keep reading.  Set in an earlier era added intrigue and grounding while capturing the French primal relationship with food. (JUDGES CHARLES AND CLYDETTE DEGROOT, on “A Pinch of Tarragon” by Lisa Burkitt)

For more on the Authors, Editorial Committee and Judges, click here.