What is a Salon?

In a French home, the salon is the living room: a place to relax, to socialize, to talk and to listen. In the 19th century, certain homes became famous for their conversation, as hostesses competed for the most amusing talkers and story tellers. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Saturday evening salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas became a focus of the city’s intellectual and social life.

The Paris Writers’ Salon headquarters is located high above the sixth arrondissement at 18 Rue de l’Odéon, in the building where Sylvia Beach lived when she ran the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore.

The Paris Writers’ Salon aims to recapture some of the excitement of the great salons while also opening a window onto one of the world’s most creative capitals. Our goal is to educate and learn through dialogue. Each session (approximately 30-45 mins) is devoted to discussions about life, literature, and the writer’s life in Paris.

Previous Paris Writers’ Salons:

1. The Modernists (December 2021): A Moveable Feast (1964) by Ernest Hemingway, Giovanni’s Room (1956) by James Baldwin, Paris France (1940) by Gertrude Stein, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World (2011) by John Baxter

2. The Roaring Twenties (February 2022): All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard (2019) by Tom Clavin & Phil Keith, Save Me the Waltz (1932) by Zelda Fitzgerald , The Golden Moments of Paris (2014) by John Baxter

3. April in Paris (April 2022): Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Paris Peasant (1926) by Louis Aragon, A Year in Paris (2019) by John Baxter

4. The Furthest Shores of Bohemia (July 2022): Quartet (1928) by Jean Rhys, Le Divorce (1997) by Diane Johnson, Paris at the End of the World (2014) by John Baxter

5. A Sense of Place (October 2022): Ripening Seed by Colette (1923), The Flaneur by Edmund White (2001), and Saint Germain des Pres: Paris’ Rebel Quarter by John Baxter (2016).

6. Un Certain Regard: Christmas Special (December 2022): Madame Tellier’s Establishment by Guy de Maupassant (1881), The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir (posthumous, 2020), Immoveable Feast by John Baxter (2008)

7. Hopes & Dreams on the French Riviera (February 2023): The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943), Loser Takes All by Graham Greene (1955), The French Riviera & Its Artists by John Baxter (2015).

8. A City of Dark & Light (April 2023): Down & Out in Paris & London by George Orwell (1933), Nana by Emile Zole (1880), Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau (1900)

9. Strangers in Paradise (July 2023): Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon by MFK Fisher (1991), My Life in CIA: A Chronicle of 1973 by Harry Matthews (2005), We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex & Love in the City of Light by John Baxter (2005)

10. Night Songs for the Sleepless (September 2023): All the Light We Cannot See (2014) by Anthony Doerr, The Fall (1956) by Albert Camus, Five Nights in Paris (2015) by John Baxter

11. Paris, Love & Memory (November 2023): Bonjour Tristesse (1954) by Francoise Sagan, In the Café of Lost Youth (2007) by Patrick Modiano, Of Love and Paris: Historic, Romantic and Obsessive Liaisons (2023) by John Baxter.

12. Montmartre from A to ??? (January 2024): Inspector Maigret and the Case of the Strangled Stripper (1950) by Georges Simenon, Last Words from Montmartre (1996) by Qiu Miojin, Montmartre: Paris’s Village of Art & Sin (2017) by John Baxter.

13. A Vintage Season (April 2024): The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway, Memoirs of Montparnasse (1969) by John Glassco.