American library paris fellowship
The application cycle for the 2025–26 American Library Visiting Fellowship is now open. Apply now!
Applications will close 1 April 2025.
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship
Enriching cross-cultural intellectual discourse since 2013
What is the Visiting Fellowship?
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding. The Visiting Fellowship is made possible by the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.
The Fellowship offers writers, researchers, and creators the unique opportunity to spend a month in Paris working independently on their own creative project while contributing to the cultural life of the Library.
In addition to working on their own project, Fellows present a public program during their residency that engages our audience and members around a central theme. The theme for 2025-2026 is Ways of Seeing.
What is Ways of Seeing?
Ways of Seeing is a theme that invites exploration of how we perceive and interpret the world through art, literature, media, and culture. Inspired by John Berger’s influential work and the broader concept of understanding perspectives, this theme encourages Fellows to delve into new ways of thinking, creating, and connecting. Programs could explore topics such as visual storytelling, cultural perception, cross-cultural exchange, or innovative approaches to creativity and representation. Learn more about Ways of Seeing →.
Fellowship Details:
Residency Period: One month, between September 2025 and June 2026. Fellowships are not available in July or August due to the Library’s programming hiatus.
Stipend: $5,000 USD paid prior to the Fellowship period to cover travel, accommodation, and expenses in Paris.
Eligibility: Open to writers, researchers, journalists, poets, screenwriters, playwrights, directors, and documentary filmmakers. Internatio
Meet the 2024-25 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellows
Congratulations to the 2024-25 Visiting Fellows & Scholars of Note!
The AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS Visiting Fellowship Program is sponsored by The de Groot Foundation, and provides writers with the ability to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library.
The 2024-25 Visiting Fellows are C Pam Zhang and David Bell.
C Pam Zhang is the author of two bestselling novels, How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, a Booker Prize nominee, and the winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, and the California Book Award. She has been a finalist for awards from PEN America, the National Book Critics Circle, and the Center for Fiction. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.
David A. Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Department of History at Princeton where he recently served as director of Princeton’s Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. Born in New York in 1961, he was educated at Harvard and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris before completing his doctorate at Princeton in 1991. Before returning to Princeton in 2010 he taught at Yale and Johns Hopkins, where he also served as Dean of Faculty. A specialist in the history of France, he is the author of seven books, including The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Harvard University Press, 2001), The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), and most recently Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Wilson Cent
American Library in Paris Visiting Fellows
Announcing the 2024–25 Visiting Fellows
In addition to scholarly writing, my time at the library was hugely enriching and productive for the conversations and other opportunities it made possible. I met activists, philosophers, students, library colleagues and others whose conversations continue to revisit and inspire me. I was continuously impressed by what a vibrant centre for cultural events and intercultural conversations the American Library is.
Kate Kirkpatrick, 2022—23 Visiting Fellow
“As much as I rely on the Internet, I’m a big fan of going places. As a reporter for The Boston Globe, I learned that there was a lot that could be accomplished on the telephone, on deadline, but that there was always something to be gained just by showing up at an event, bumping into people, observing things, or having unplanned conversations. A Visiting Fellowship at the American Library in Paris was an extraordinary opportunity, prima facie. It was made even more so by all these experiences, many of which I could not have planned. So while I cannot possibly express my gratitude sufficiently to the American Library in Paris, the board and staff, to the de Groots and the de Groot Foundation, I can say that it worked. I’m confident that future Visiting Fellows will have similar unscripted revelations. Who knows what might await. My advice to them would be as follows: Just go.”
Anthony Flint, inaugural Visiting Fellow
Call for Entry See All
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship was created in 2013 to nurture and sustain a heritage as old as the Library itself: deepening French-American understanding. The Visiting Fellowship offers writers and researchers an opportunity to pursue a creative project in Paris for a month or longer while participating actively in the life of the American Library.
There are two one-month Fellowship periods a year in fall and spring, with dates to be specified later.
A $5,000 stipend will be paid before start of a Fellowship period. The award, to be spent at the discretion of the Fellow, is designed to cover travel to Paris, accommodation, and expenses associated with the month in Paris. In addition to the stipend, the Library will connect the fellow to resources and people in Paris that could be helpful to his or her project.
The American Library in Paris Visiting Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of The de Groot Foundation.
What is expected of Visiting Fellows?
Visiting Fellows must be in Paris during the period of the fellowship, and are expected to be present in the American Library for a minimum of three half-days a week. During their residency, fellows will present an hour-long evening program at the Library, participate in a Library reception, meet with staff informally to explore a topic of mutual interest, and extend the Library’s reach by participating in events arranged by the Library with other organizations in Paris.
At the conclusion of the Visiting Fellowship period, fellows will provide the Library and the funding foundation with a written report of the Fellowship experience. Fellows are expected to appropriately acknowledge the Library and the Visiting Fellowship in publications and print media related to the Fellowship project. Fellows will participate in the Library’s social media communication, fundraising campaigns, and other public events.