OUR NEXT EVENT:

Monday, December 21, 2009
Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman


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Village Voice Bookshop is open seven days a week, and carries approximately 18,000 titles from English-language literature. All our titles are carefully selected by founder Odile Hellier and her knowledgeable staff, and reflect their passionate interests in literature, culture, politics, and contemporary social issues. If you are looking for a title we do not have in stock, we will be happy to special order the book for you. During the year, there are special reading and lecture events in the evenings, publicized on our Events Paris Bookstorepage. You can also ask to be added to our by sending us your name, current email address and mailing address.

The bookstore opened in 1982 (click to view a slideshow of the store), and is located in the heart of the historic Saint Germain des Près neighborhood, between the cobblestones of Place Saint Germain des Près and the equally charming Place Saint Sulpice. You will find the Village Voice Bookshop on a narrow street, the rue Princesse (near Metro stops St. Germain des Près or Mabillon), which was named after La Grande Demoiselle, one of King Louis XIV’s favorites. With its windows full of colourful new titles, the Village Voice Bookshop stands out as a literary gem among the trendy cafés, restaurants, bars and fashion boutiques.

When the bookstore first opened, these narrow streets, lined with 16th and 17th century houses, was still a “village” - famous for its bookshops, publishing houses, literary cafés and restaurants where writers and students would gather. Thus we named the bookshop Village Voice in reference to the vibrant local community, as well as in tribute to the vanguard New York weekly, Village Voice, founded by Norman Mailer.

From the very beginning, the Village Voice Bookshop was a gathering place for Americans, British, and Anglophones and Anglophiles in general. For more than twenty years, the most prestigious writers have read and discussed their work in our intimate setting. More often than not, the audience flows from the second floor, where we set up chairs, down the staircase, and onto the ground floor, where they watch the speaker on close-circuit video. By this time, the list of writers who have read at the Village Voice would make a thick and exciting anthology, representing Anglophone literature at the turn of this century, from all over the globe.
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Village Voice English Bookstore
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Season’s Greetings

In 2006 The Village Voice Bookshop welcomed to its literary evenings:

Hazel Rowley, Alice Notley, Carolyn Burke, David Sedaris, Richard Powers, Beverly Bye Brahic, Adrian Mathews, Denis Hirson,   Philip Gourevitch (The Paris Review), with Olivia de Haviland, Toni Bentley, Carmen Callil, Kate Braverman, Alan Furst, Besty Burton, Jonathan Aaron, John Calder, John Erdman, Barry Lopez, Patricia Nolan, Catherine Weber, Lynn Sharon-Schwartz, Adrienne Rich, Jonathan Ames, Jake Lamar, Edmund White, Benjamin Kunkel, C.K.Williams, Greil Marcus, Marilyn Hacker, Russell Banks, E.A.Markham, Kerry Hardie, Tom Reiss and Suketu Mehta.

We thank each of them for contributing to make the Village Voice Bookshop a rare and special place in Paris for stimulating exchange between Anglophone authors and their readers.

We hope to see you in our store, before or after Christmas and the Holidays.

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