On this page: Costs | Academics | Courses and Syllabi | Housing and Meals | Excursions | Planning Travel | Faculty
Writers in Paris
2023 Program Dates
Student Arrival: Friday, June 23, 2023
Student Departure: Saturday, July 22, 2023
*Please note that housing is provided for the exact dates of the program. If a student wishes to arrive earlier or depart later, the student will need to find their own accommodations.
Program Summary
Writers in Paris students choose to focus on poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, and attend daily writing workshops, craft seminars, and literary readings and events. Writing and reading assignments are designed to encourage immersion in the city. For example, poets might visit the Louvre to write ekphrastic poems or create Parisian street sonnets by taking a 14-block walk of the St. Denis area, where François Villon lived, and generating a line of poetry per block. Fiction writers might study dialogue by listening for overheard speech at a sidewalk café or learn about description and setting by writing a story set in the neighborhood where Hemingway lived and worked.
“I made connections with some of the best poets, writers and editors in the world.”
Application Deadlines
Interest forms now closed for 2023
Check back in fall for Summer 2024
Program Director
Deborah Landau
Professor and Director, Creative Writing Program, NYU
Tuition and Fees
Tuition, Fees, Housing and International Insurance are required, and these rates are set by NYU.
Program Costs |
2023 |
| Undergraduate Tuition - 8 credits | $13,040 |
| Undergraduate Registration Fees - 8 credits | $1,038 |
| Program & Activities Fee | $500 |
| GeoBlue International Health Insurance for 4 week program |
Included |
MDIF - Single Room Bagnolet - Single Room |
$1,827 $1,537 |
PLEASE NOTE: Students are responsible for purchase of transportation to/from program location. All students participating in the program are required to live in NYU-provided housing.
Students are encouraged to budget for summer abroad programs based on individual needs. Additional resources for planning are available on the Additional Costs and Financial Assistance pages.
Academics
Writers in Paris students choose to focus on poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, and attend daily writing workshops, craft seminars, and literary readings and events. Writing and reading assignments are designed to encourage immersion in the city. For example, poets might visit the Louvre to write ekphrastic poems or create Parisian street sonnets by taking a 14-block walk of the St. Denis area, where François Villon lived, and generating a line of poetry per block. Fiction writers might study dialogue by listening for overheard speech at a sidewalk café or learn about description and setting by writing a story set in the neighborhood where Hemingway lived and worked.
Courses
All courses are taught in English. All students must register for 8 undergraduate credits.
Coursework consists of alternating afternoons of craft seminars and writing workshops. Evenings feature readings, lectures, panel discussions, and special events. The schedule includes time for writing, reading, and exploring Paris, and the program culminates in a celebratory reading showcasing student work.
Students must register for one of the following courses:
CRWRI-UA 9818 – Writers in Paris: Fiction ─ 8 credits
Sample Syllabi
Sample Fiction Workshop Syllabus (PDF)
Sample Fiction Craft Syllabus (PDF)
CRWRI-UA 9819 – Writers in Paris: Poetry ─ 8 credits
Sample Syllabi
Sample Poetry Workshop Syllabus (PDF)
Sample Poetry Craft Syllabus (PDF)
CRWRI-UA 9835 – Writers in Paris: Creative Non-Fiction ─ 8 credits
Sample Syllabi
Sample Creative Non-fiction Workshop Syllabus (PDF)
Sample Creative Non-fiction Craft Syllabus (PDF)
Each of these courses is comprised of a writing workshop, craft seminar, and nightly literary events. Students work closely with two accomplished world-class writers—one in the context of the writing workshop, and another in the context of the craft seminar.
Workshops provide students with guidance on the art of revision, as well as with experience giving and receiving feedback. Individual private conferences supplement coursework, and each student submits a final portfolio of writing at the end of the program. In the craft seminars— literature courses taught by writers for writers— students study great works of literature in order to learn how to create their own. Emphasis is on close reading and the basic elements of craft. Poetry students read exemplary poems and study voice, style, line, image, music, metaphor, syntax, and diction. Fiction writers consider stories and novels with a focus on the basic techniques of fiction, including plot, narrative, dialogue, tone, structure, rhythm, setting, and style.
Students also attend a nightly series of readings, lectures, panel discussions, publishing forums, and special events. These events feature program faculty as well as international visiting writers, teachers, and editors.
Housing and Meals
All students participating in the program are required to live in NYU-provided housing. Students live at Maison de l'Île de France, which is arranged through Cité Universitaire, or students live in Les Estudines Bagnolet. The rooms are apartment style single rooms, with private bathrooms and a communal kitchen on each floor. Please note there is no meal plan or dining hall.
To learn more about housing facilities, please review the Office of Global Programs NYU Paris page. Please note that some of the information listed on this page is not summer specific.
Planning Travel to Paris
Students are encouraged to consult internal and external resources to prepare for their summer program. The following links may be used for general destination information, immigration needs and travel medicine planning:
- U.S. State Department Travel Information for France
- All admitted and confirmed students should consult The NYU Office of Global Services for immigration support
- CDC Health Information for Travelers to France
- NYU students may consult the NYU Student Health Center for Travel Medicine information and appointments
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Photos shared by students
Writers in Paris
CAS Summer Abroad -
DEBORAH LANDAU (Director) is the author of four collections of poetry: Soft Targets (winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award), The Uses of the Body and The Last Usable Hour, all Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her other awards include a Jacob K Javits Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR's All Things Considered, and included on "Best of 2015" lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition was published by Valparaiso Edicíones in 2017. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, and The Best American Poetry, and included in anthologies such as Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women's Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She is a tenured full Professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
CATHERINE BARNETT (Poetry) is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart Prize. Her first book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced, won the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award and was published in spring 2004 by Alice James Books. Her second, The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press), was the winner of the 2012 James Laughlin Award. Barnett has taught at Barnard, the New School, and NYU, where she was honored with an Outstanding Service Award. Photo © by Jacqueline Mia Foster.
KEN CHEN (Poetry/Creative Nonfiction) was a 2019-2020 Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, where he worked on his book Death Star. The hybrid nonfiction book follows his journey to the underworld to rescue his father and his encounters there with those destroyed by colonialism. He was the 2009 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his book Juvenilia, which was selected by the poet Louise Glück. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf writers Conference, he has published nonfiction in Best American Essays, N+1, The New Republic, Frieze, The New Inquiry, Poetry, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Chen served as the Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop from 2008 to 2019 and co-founded Culturestrike, a national arts organization dedicated to migrant justice.
NATHAN ENGLANDER (Fiction) is the author of the novels Dinner at the Center of the Earth, The Ministry of Special Cases, and the story collections For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His books have been translated in twenty languages, and his short fiction widely anthologized, most recently in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Englander's play, The Twenty-Seventh Man, was produced at The Public Theater in 2012, and at The Old Globe in San Diego in 2015. He translated the New American Haggadah, and cotranslated Etgar Keret's Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. In 2017, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Binghamton University. He is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University, and a columnist for Italy’s La Stampa newspaper. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER (Fiction) is the author of the bestselling novel Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. His other novels include Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and, most recently, Here I Am. He is also the author of a book of nonfiction, Eating Animals. Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest,” and was included in The New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list of writers. He lives in Brooklyn.
KATIE KITAMURA (Fiction) is a critic and novelist living in New York City. She is the author of Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, both of which were finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. Her newest novel, A Separation, was published in February 2017. A recipient of a Lannan Residency Fellowship, Kitamura has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Grana, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and is a regular contributor to Frieze.
HARI KUNZRU (Creative Nonfiction) is a Clinical Professor in the Creative Writing Program. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy and Literature from Warwick University. He is the author of six novels, including White Tears, a finalist for the PEN Jean Stein Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, One Book New York, the Prix du Livre Inter étranger, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His latest novel Red Pill was published in 2020 by Knopf. He is also the author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men and a short story collection, Noise. His novella Memory Palace was presented as an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Guardian, New York Review of Books, Granta, Bookforum, October and Frieze. He has written screenplays, radio drama, and experimental work using field recordings and voice-to-text software. He has taught at Hunter College and Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He is a past deputy president of English PEN, a judge for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and has been a frequent presenter, interviewer and guest on television and radio.
RAVEN LEILANI's (Fiction) debut novel Luster (2020) was awarded the Kirkus Prize, Dylan Thomas Prize, NBCC John Leonard Prize, VCU Cabell First Novel Prize, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, among others. Her work has been published in Granta, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Conjunctions, The Cut, and New England Review, among other publications. Leilani received her MFA from NYU and was an Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence. She was also selected as a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. In 2022 she served as the John Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi and teaches creative writing at NYU.
UZODINMA IWEALA is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor. He is the CEO of The Africa Center in New York, promoting a new narrative about Africa and its diaspora through a focus on culture, policy and business. Uzodinma is the Co-Founder of Ventures Africa Magazine, a publication that covers business, policy, culture and innovation spaces in Africa. He is a member of the Presidents Youth Advisory Group (PYAG) for Jobs for Youth Africa (JfYA) at the African Development Bank (AfDB). He is also on the Board of the NewNow, a subsidiary of the Virgin Group’s charitable arm, Virgin Unite. He has written three books: Beasts of No Nation (2005), a novel also adapted into a major motion picture; Our Kind of People (2012), a non-fiction account of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria; and Speak No Evil (2018), a novel about Washington, D.C.
MATTHEW ROHRER (Poetry) is the author of The Sky Contains the Plans (Wave Books, 2020), The Others (Wave Books, 2017), which was the winner of the 2017 Believer Book Award, Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. With Joshua Beckman and Anthony McCann he wrote the secret book Gentle Reader! It is not for sale. Octopus Books published his action/adventure chapbook-length poem They All Seemed Asleep in 2008. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994.
His poems have been widely anthologized and have appeared in many journals. He's received the Hopwood Award for poetry and a Pushcart prize, and was selected as a National Poetry Series winner, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Recently he has participated in residencies/ performances at the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) and the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle).
DARIN STRAUSS (Fiction) is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than it Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir, Half a Life, the comic-book series, Olivia Twist, and most recently the acclaimed novel, The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story (Random House, 2020). A recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Library Association Award, and numerous other prizes, Strauss has written screenplays for Disney, Gary Oldman, and Julie Taymor. His work has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries, and he is a Clinical Professor at the NYU Creative Writing Program.