Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Paris writing classes starting September 2015

With the "rentrée" only a couple of weeks away, here is a preview of writing classes on offer this fall in Paris:

- WICE Creative Writing Classes for all levels and interests: short story, memoir, Paris vignettes and more

-  NEW! Write-in Paris (WIP) with Sion Dayson:  WIP helps people commit to carving out time and space for their writing. It's like weekly writer dates in the company of good people. Sion will host the 6-week sessions in her  home. Each meeting is 2 1/2 hours long (2 hours of focused writing time, 30  minutes of community-building).

 - Paris Lit Up Drop in Writing Workshops: Every Saturday at 15h sharp to 17h. see ParisLitUp for details on what to bring and how. (upstairs at L’Autre Café, 62 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud).

 

- The Paris Writers Group: Meeting on Weds for more than a decade, this group is open to all writers and free (please buy  a beverage or food from the host cafe) with John Pope and/or Helen Cusack O’Keeffe.

 

- The Paris Master Class Workshop with Shannon Cain: free, graduate level, by application only. Send about 10 pages of something you’ve written recently to [email protected]. Workshop location and other important details will be provided upon acceptance.

 

- Writers' Meet-ups in Paris: all kinds of offerings!

 

 

 

 

When Americans Get Health Advice From Lucky Strike and Coca Cola

 

On December 23, 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, launching the United States' "War on Cancer".

Yet, despite unprecedented resources, cancer mortality continued to increase.

There were many reasons for this, as Siddhartha Mukherjee documents in his outstanding "biography of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. Cancer was difficult to understand. Scientists, surgeons and oncologists worked separately. Double blind evaluations of therapies were not adequately used to determine what worked and what did not.  But one reason stands out:

The  clear link between smoking and cancer was ignored. Attacking preventable cancer deaths was simply not part of the plan. And the tobacco industry did everything it could to ensure that it would not be part of the plan.

***

 IS TYPE 2 DIABETES THE NEW CANCER?

Faced with clear evidence that its products caused cancer, the tobacco industry used its massive financial and media buying power to hide the evidence.

Philip Morris created the Council for Tobacco Research to instill doubt. Big Tobacco financed friendly scientists who would come up with "studies" that "showed" that the evidence was confusing. That no conclusion could be drawn. That "more research was needed.

Mukherjee's stunning biography of cancer

 

Today, faced with a similar health crisis - the explosion of preventable type 2 diabetes, another blue chip American company is taking a similar path. 

According to the NYT, Coca Cola has created the Global Energy Balance Network, to "alter" the war on obesity. The purpose: to shift the blame from sugary drinks (sold by Coca Cola) to a lack of exercise. 

 ***

 

Lucky Strike Cancer Science Meets Coca Cola Diabetes Research

Post moved HERE

 

A literary summer in Paris: readings, new books, workshops

Outstanding literary events this June at the Maison de la Poésie!

If you have never been to one of their events - not far from Beaubourg - you are in for a treat. Don't miss their special UK authors series: Martin Amis, Emma Healey, Howard Jacobson, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith….

 

 June 5-26 Maison de la Poesie: TANDEM PARIS-LONDON 2015

 

FRI 5 JUIN – 19H  : Martin Amis

THUR  11 JUIN – 21H : Emma Healey

FRI 12 JUIN – de 18H à minuit :  Midnight Run (Piste de nuit) : Inua Ellams, Pascale Petit, Adam Biles… Découverte nocturne du Paris des artistes anglais contemporains

 SAT 13 JUIN – 19H : 5×15, le think tank culturel, programmation “Spécial Londres”

 SAT 13 JUIN – 21H : Pascale Petit & Valérie Rouzeau

 SUN 14 JUIN – 18H : Howard Jacobson

WED 17 JUIN – 19H : Nick Hornby

FRI 19 JUIN – 20H :  Le Laboratoire onirique de Barbara Carlotti #4, invité exceptionnel : Jonathan Coe

 SAM 20 JUIN – 19H : Carte blanche à la revue Granta

 THUR 25 JUIN – 19H : Hanif  Kureishi

 FRI 26 JUIN – 19H : Zadie Smith

 

Peter Carey's Lessons On Cultural Arrogance

The award-winning Australian novelist Peter Carey used his literary fame and influence to denounce Pen American's decision to honor Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and writers who were murdered by Islamists in the heart of Paris.

Citing "PEN's seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French",  Carey encouraged other writers to condemn the award for the French satirists.

Paris Writers News would like to ask Peter Carey some questions

Films about faith: Christopher Norris on the unique Insight Film Festival

The Insight Film Festival is unique: it seeks to discover and showcase a wide diversity of films about faith and to support young filmmakers. Such is the quality of many of the films submitted that one of its laureates was nominated for an Oscar.  

At the  2015 London Book Fair, I had the good fortune to meet  Christopher Norris, Editor and Development Executive of the  Insight Film Festival, and to talk with him about the history, aims and achievements of this remarkable film event.

Christopher Norris, Editor and Development Executive, Insight Film Festival

a Paris Writers News interview

Ideological French school reform forgets children, learning, languages, excellence

Schools in France have, for years, suffered from four terrible failures:

1) Inability to help students who are identified as fragile, or weak, or in need of help from their youngest years - thus perpetuating and even exacerbating social inequalities

2) Insufficient teacher training, both initially and as part of continuing education due in part to the preference for investing scarce resources into SELECTION instead of into training (I wrote about this, with as much humor as possible, in Sorbonne Confidential)

3) Failure to replace teachers who are absent in middle school and lycée, which leads to students losing ONE WHOLE YEAR of learning due to absent teachers who are not replaced as well as too few adults in the school.

4) Persistently poor results in foreign language learning, compared to other European countries

This is, of course, just a short list. And (since it is focused on failures) it does not mention the many successes.

The reason I mention it is to provide context for the current battle over what's called the "collège" (middle school) reform.

The first three points - all critical - are not dealt with at all. And the last point (languages) is deliberately made worse: the one thing that worked well will be destroyed.

***

 

145 Writers Against Freedom of Speech

Following the lead of Francine Prose, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey and Teju Cole, the 145 writers below signed a letter protesting the PEN award for "courage and freedom of expression" to Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine whose staff was massacred by Islamists in Paris in January.

We "don't believe in censoring expression" they write, BUT  we are against "rewarding" "expression that violates the acceptable".  

Violates the acceptable? What can this possibly mean? In this exclusive interview, the Letter explains itself.

Q&A with a Letter 

a Paris Writers News interview

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PWN: What do you mean by "expression that violates the acceptable"?

Letter: It is expression that might offend someone who we consider to be "marginalized, embattled and victimized".

President of SOS Racism: "Charlie Hebdo is anti-racist"

"Scandalous." "An insult to the memory" "An insult to the living and to the dead."

This is Dominique Sopo, the president de SOS Racisme, France's leading anti-racism and anti-discrimination organisation. In this video (in French) he expresses his  outrage that people falsely accuse Charlie Hebdo of being racist when it is the opposite. He says that Charlie Hebdo is the most important anti-racist weekly in France. That all the anti-racism activists in France know this, and that Cabu, Charb and Wolinski regularly did cartoons FOR anti-racist campaigns.  Mr Sopo says that lies about Charlie Hebdo are creating a "mob mentality". 

(Even if you don't understand French, you can hear from Mr Sopo's tone how angry he is that ignorant morons attack Charlie Hebdo for "racism". )

I don't know how exactly the moral brigade among writers in America got the idea that the fearless satirists of Charlie Hebdo were "racist", but it's simply not true. If you have been spreading these lies you should be ashamed of yourself for slandering the dead and the living.

Writers who don't understand the video might pause for a moment to think of the implications of this.

___

For more of my blog posts on related topics, please see:

145 Writers Against Freedom of Speech?

Garry Trudeau's Shame

 

 

Read first, pay what you want: Bartlomiej Filipek on new publishing options

One of the great pleasures of the London Book Fair is discovering innovative approaches to publishing, marketing, and distributing books and ebooks. Thus I was delighted to meet Bartlomiej Filipek, the General Manager of OpenBooks.com which proposes a new business model for ebooks, designed to facilitate sharing and discovery. Books are openly shared and readers pay, if they want to, after reading -  an amount they fix themselves. Could this be the model for you?

London Book Fair Special: a talk with Bartlomiej Filipek, General Manager of OpenBooks.com,

a Paris Writers News interview