Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Albert Alla on creating English language theater in Paris

 An innovative showcase for English-language theatre opens in Paris and invites writers to submit plays. But hurry! The deadline is October 21!

 Albert Alla on the Montmartre Dionysia: showcase and competition for English-language playwrights in Paris

a Paris Writers News Interview 

Judith Starkston, author of Hand of Fire, on writing historical fiction

An interview with Judith Starkston about writing historical fiction.

Classicist Judith Starkston writes historical fiction. Her new novel, Hand of Fire, is set against the backdrop of the Trojan War. What is historical fiction? How to blend fact with imagination?  Which rules of the genre must be observed? We asked Judith to share some insights into historical fiction.

Judith Starkston, a Paris Writers News Interview (see part 1 here)

Best thing happening on the internet? Last Week Tonight's John Oliver

Foreign funnyman John Oliver has lined up the most penetrating - and also hilarious - videos of investigative journalism you can find anywhere.

Honed by years of aggressively funny muckraking for Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, Oliver's Last Week Tonight is absolutely mustsee reporting of the highest grade.

Segments are long - usually nearly 15 minutes - detailed and amply documented. And they attack, with intelligence and wit, the most horrific abuses of the current American Republic: massive shakedowns by police;  cable monopolists' attack on the internet; the terrifying mess that is our nuclear arsenal.  Why, one wonders, weren't these stories brought to our attention earlier?

A taste:

CIVIL FOREITURE

 

 OUR NUCLEAR WEAPONS

 

 STUDENT DEBT AND FOR PROFIT COLLEGES

 

 

FERGUSON

 "more than just a couple, but I don't think many more than that..."

 

Hot new books about France, Paris

If you are a reader/writer who would like to interview one of the authors of the books below, please contact me about publishing the interview in the Author on Authors series!

If you read French and have a particular interest in cheating husbands or the future of France, don't miss France's hottest bestseller of them all, Trierweiler's ferocious tell-all Merci pour ce moment. (More on how the former first girlfriend evaded French censors here.) Also, just released, bad boy French expat and immense talent Gerard Depardieu's memoirs, Ca s'est fait comme ça. In English, hot new titles include Flirting with French, How to be a Parisian, Tita, French Pastry Murder, Mademoiselle: Coco Channel, My Grandfather's Gallery, Murder in Nice and more! (see below)

French schoolchildren continue to suffer due to absent teachers

A few years ago my Franco-American daughter was visiting Mississippi, and she met a 10-year-old boy whose situation was unlike any she had ever encountered in France.

"He doesn't go to school!" she said. "His parents refused. Said he should be homeschooled. But they're busy. So he's homeschooling - HIMSELF!"