UPCOMING EVENTS

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• BS251 Exploring French History through Novels

  • When
    25 Sep 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Le Nelson's Café, 16 rue de Coquillière, 75001 Paris

  Join waitlist

  Note: The registration limit for this has been reached. Please put your name on the waitlist and you will be notified if a space opens up.

  Free for WICE members! Come with us on a captivating journey where literature and history intertwine to offer a uniquely vivid perspective on France's past. You’ll plunge into a vibrant tapestry of pivotal events, cultural shifts, and influential figures…while falling under the spell of some of France’s best historical novelists.  And then the discussion begins!

  Our meetings take place in French so you'll enhance your understanding of the past while simultaneously improving your French reading, comprehension, and speaking skills in a friendly convivial group.

  Group facilitator: Claudia Oudet, French teacher, editor, and translator, will offer linguistic help and literary/historical insights.

  We'll meet in person at Le Nelson's Café, 16 rue Coquillière, 75001  

  • Métro : Lignes 1/4/7/11/14 RER A/B/D Châtelet Les Halles 
  • Bus : 74 – 85 : Louvre – Etienne Marcel / Bourse du commerce

  Préparez-vous à discuter:

  
  

  “Les Rois maudits, tome 3: Les Poisons de la Couronne”

  Les Poisons de la Couronne ressuscite presque jour par jour, les intrigues, les haines et les crimes du règne de Louis X le Hutin, qui ne dura que dix-huit mois, mais dont les conséquences devaient être capitales pour la monarchie française. 

  Lorsqu'il meurt empoisonné, en juin 1316, c'est la première fois depuis plus de trois siècles qu'un roi de France décède sans laisser un héritier mâle.

  Come prepared to discuss:

  “Les Rois maudits, tome 3: Les Poisons de la Couronne” is the third volume in Maurice Druon's historical series, retracing the events of 14th-century France. It recreates almost day by day, the intrigues, hatreds and crimes of the short reign of Louis X le Hutin, which lasted just eighteen months, but whose consequences were to be momentous for the French monarchy.

  When he died of poisoning in June 1316, it was the first time in over three centuries that a French king had died without leaving a male heir.

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• LS261 Café Littéraire: Madame Bovary, by Gustav Flaubert

  • When
    26 Sep 2025
  •  
    3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment near Place de la République. Details will be included in reminder emails.
  • Spaces left
    0

  Join waitlist

  

  Note: The registration limit for this event has been reached. Please put your name on the waitlist and you will be contacted if a spot opens up.

  Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is a landmark novel of 19th-century French literature that explores the tensions between romantic ideals and mundane reality. It follows Emma Bovary, a provincial doctor’s wife who yearns for passion, luxury, and a life of excitement beyond the confines of her dull marriage and small-town life. Influenced by romantic novels and disillusioned with domesticity, Emma engages in affairs and spends recklessly in pursuit of beauty and meaning. But her attempts to escape lead only to emotional turmoil and financial ruin. Flaubert’s style—precise, ironic, and emotionally restrained—offers a penetrating portrait of a woman’s desires clashing with societal expectations. The novel was controversial at the time of its publication in 1857, leading to an obscenity trial, but has since become a foundational work in literary realism. Madame Bovary remains a powerful study of disillusionment, longing, and the tragic costs of self-deception.
  

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 19 September, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  
  

  The book group meets at the organizer's apartment. The directions, door code, telephone number, etc., are sent in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails, following registration.

  Registration for the September meeting opens on 01 September 2025.

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• LO031 Murder, They Read: "The Chalk Circle Man," by Fred Vargas

  • When
    03 Oct 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    0

  Join waitlist

  

  Note: The registration limit for this event has been reached. Please put your name on the waitlist and you will be notified if a space opens.

  In Paris, a string of enigmatic chalk circles begins appearing overnight on sidewalks, each neatly drawn in blue and enclosing odd detritus: a broken shoelace, a pigeon wing, a doll’s head. The public chuckles, the newspapers speculate, and the police shrug at what seems no more than eccentric street art. But Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, newly arrived in the capital, takes the circles seriously—sensing, with his trademark intuition, a lurking menace others dismiss.

  When a murdered woman is discovered within one of the circles, Adamsberg’s unease proves justified. Patient, dreamy, and quietly obstinate, he pieces together fragments others overlook, while his skeptical lieutenant, Danglard, provides a foil of logic and doubt. As the circles multiply, so do the suspects: the lonely, the unstable, the overlooked of Paris life.

  Blending whimsy with dread, Vargas transforms an apparently trivial curiosity into a chilling puzzle. Through Adamsberg’s unorthodox gaze, the novel explores how society notices—or fails to notice—signs of danger hidden in plain sight. The Chalk Circle Man not only introduces Vargas’s singular detective but also inaugurates a series where intuition and strangeness often prove more revealing than methodical deduction.

  

  
  

  Registration for the October meeting will open on Saturday, 06 September. People on the September wait list have first priority for registration.

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• LO111 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    11 Oct 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    0

  Join waitlist

  Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

   “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” -W. H. Auden

  Note: The registration limit for this event has been reached. Put your name on the waitlist and you will be notified if a space opens up.

  Program Description:

  Tea and Tattered Pages is a multi-faceted program designed to bring poetry closer to the fore in our lives, and perhaps create a small community around it. Our activities include reading, writing, discussing, reciting, and trying to live poetry.

  There will be no fixed agenda for events; rather, forthcoming events will usually be decided by vote as we move through the year, and published as things are decided. You can get a sense of what sorts of activities we will be doing on the program's web page:

  Tea and Tattered Pages

  October Agenda

  At our October kickoff meeting, participants will each bring a favorite poem to share — and hopefully read out loud — and discuss why it is a favorite. We will also discuss the various activities listed on the program's web page, make additions, deletions, or changes as desired, and select an activity for the November meeting.

  General Guidelines

  In general, registration for each activity will open the day after the previous activity finishes. 

  If you have any questions, please contact literature@wice-paris.org

  Our Poet-in-Residence: Heather Hartley

  

  Heather Hartley’s poetry collections include Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She was Paris Editor for Tin House magazine for over fifteen years.

  Her short fiction, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Literary Review and other venues. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent’s (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture and has also taught at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA program.

  www.heatherhartleyink.com

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• LO231 Living Room Players: The School for Wives, by Molière

  • When
    23 Oct 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    2

  Register

  The School for Wives is a satirical comedy that explores gender roles, control, and the follies of obsessive guardianship. The story centers on Arnolphe, a wealthy, middle-aged man who believes that ignorance ensures fidelity. To create the perfect, obedient wife, he raises a young girl, Agnès, in seclusion, shielding her from the world. However, his plans unravel when Agnès falls in love with Horace, a young suitor who unknowingly shares his romantic successes with Arnolphe himself. The play critiques misogyny and authoritarianism with wit and irony, ultimately exposing the absurdity of trying to control love and human nature.

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  The general concept of WICE play readings is that people receive the script by email about a week before the reading, and then pull straws for roles at the meeting. Attendees sit around a living room and simply read their parts with as much theatrical flourish as they care to give (but there are no expectations of real acting).
  

  The reading will take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number will be sent in the two reminder emails.

  
  

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• LO241 Café Littéraire: Total Chaos ("Total Khëops"), by Jean-Claude Izzo

  • When
    24 Oct 2025
  •  
    3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    10

  Total Chaos is the first novel in Jean-Claude Izzo’s gritty Marseilles Trilogy, a landmark of French noir that blends crime fiction with social critique and Mediterranean lyricism. The story follows Fabio Montale, an ex-cop drawn back into a violent underworld when two childhood friends are brutally murdered. Set in the sun-drenched, volatile streets of Marseilles, the novel explores themes of loyalty, lost ideals, racism, corruption, and the personal cost of justice. As Fabio investigates, he’s forced to confront not only the criminal forces at work but also his own past and complicity in the chaos around him. Izzo’s Marseilles is not just a backdrop but a living, breathing character—multicultural, decaying, and deeply human. With its blend of poetic language, political edge, and emotional depth, Total Chaos transcends the crime genre, offering a mournful, passionate portrait of a man—and a city—struggling to hold onto a sense of meaning amid collapse.
  

  

  
  

  The book group meets at the organizer's apartment. The directions, door code, telephone number, etc., are sent in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails, following registration.

  Registration for the October meeting opens on Saturday, 27 September 2025.

  Show details
• LN071 Murder, They Read: "The Cold, Cold Ground," by Adrian McGinty

  • When
    07 Nov 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  Northern Ireland, 1981. The hunger strikes rage, the streets seethe with violence, and trust is scarce on either side of the sectarian divide. Amid this turmoil, Detective Sean Duffy—Catholic in a predominantly Protestant force—stumbles upon a murder staged to look like a lover’s quarrel. The victim’s hand is severed, and a cassette tape left nearby hints at something darker than a domestic dispute.

  Duffy is sharp, cynical, and more than a little reckless, but he also knows when things don’t add up. As more bodies appear, whispers of a serial killer surface—an unlikely notion in a land where political killings dominate. Navigating corrupt colleagues, hostile neighbors, and the ever-present threat of roadside bombs, Duffy digs where others would prefer to look away.

  McKinty’s novel inaugurates the Sean Duffy series with grit and wry humor, anchoring classic noir tropes in the combustible landscape of the Troubles. The Cold, Cold Ground captures a society where ordinary crime becomes entangled with extraordinary politics, and where one dogged detective risks alienation—and his life—for the sake of truth.

  Registration opens on Saturday, 04 October.

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 01 November, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  
  

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• LN081 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    08 Nov 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    10

  Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

   "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know this is poetry." -Emily Dickinson

  Program Description:

  Tea and Tattered Pages is a multi-faceted program designed to bring poetry closer to the fore in our lives, and perhaps create a small community around it. Our activities include reading, writing, discussing, reciting, and trying to live poetry.

  There will be no fixed agenda for events; rather, forthcoming events will usually be decided by vote as we move through the year, and published as things are decided. You can get a sense of what sorts of activities we will be doing on the program's web page:

  Tea and Tattered Pages

  November Agenda

  The November agenda will be decided at the October meeting, and posted on Sunday, 12 October (when registration for the November meeting opens).

  General Guidelines

  In general, registration for each activity will open the day after the previous activity finishes. Registration for the November meeting will open on Sunday, 12 October.

  If you have any questions, please contact literature@wice-paris.org

  Our Poet-in-Residence: Heather Hartley

  

  Heather Hartley’s poetry collections include Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She was Paris Editor for Tin House magazine for over fifteen years.

  Her short fiction, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Literary Review and other venues. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent’s (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture and has also taught at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA program.

  www.heatherhartleyink.com

  Show details
• LN211 Storyscapes: The Passion - Jeanette Winterson

  • When
    21 Nov 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    The Louvre
  • Spaces left
    10

  Event Description

  In this novel (pardon the pun) offering, WICE attendees will read Jeanette Winterson’s 1987 novel “The Passion,” and then tour the Louvre examining and discussing different paintings that relate to the novel’s plot, themes, characters, events, and locations.

  “The Passion” is described on Amazon as “Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice's compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.”

  The exact meeting place and other details will be in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails. The event is expected to last approximately three hours, including time for coffee or drinks afterwards to socialize.
  

  Registration for this event opens on Friday, 24 October. 
  

  About the Guides

  Lili Varga and Theodor Cozart-Madsen are both interning at WICE this autumn in the Literature Program.  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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• LN271 Living Room Players: To be announced

  • When
    27 Nov 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    8

  

  The November play has not been chosen yet. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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  The general concept of The Living Room Players is that people receive the script by email about a week before the reading, and then roles are assigned at the meeting. Attendees sit around a living room and simply read their parts with as much theatrical flourish as they care to give (but there are no expectations of real acting).
  

  The readings generally take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number will be sent in the two reminder emails.

  Registration for the November reading opens on Friday, 24 October.

  
  

  Show details
• LN241 Café Littéraire: “Fresh Water for Flowers” (“Changer l’eau des fleurs”), Valerie Perrin

  • When
    28 Nov 2025
  •  
    3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    10

  

  Fresh Water for Flowers, by Valérie Perrin, is a tender, quietly powerful novel about grief, resilience, and the hidden lives of ordinary people. The story centers on Violette Toussaint, a cemetery caretaker in a small French town, whose calm exterior hides a past marked by deep sorrow and unexpected joy. As mourners come and go, Violette tends not just to graves but to the emotional weight others carry—and, in doing so, slowly reveals her own story: a complicated marriage, an unimaginable loss, and the unlikely friendships that help her endure. When a police officer arrives with questions about his mother’s final wishes, it sets in motion a series of revelations that reshape Violette’s understanding of her own life. Poetic, humane, and laced with humor, Fresh Water for Flowers explores how love and loss intertwine, and how healing often comes from the most surprising places.
  

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 17 November, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  
  

  The book group meets at the organizer's apartment. The directions, door code, telephone number, etc., are sent in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails, following registration.

  Registration for the November meeting opens on Saturday, 25 October 2025.

  Show details
• LD051 Murder, They Read: "A Cold Day for Murder," by Dana Stabenow

  • When
    05 Dec 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    La Grande Colette, 10 Rue Saint-Martin, 75004
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  In the stark interior of Alaska’s Park lands, a young ranger vanishes without trace. His disappearance might be shrugged off as misadventure in unforgiving country—until a second man, the son of a powerful Washington insider, goes missing while searching for him. The FBI descends, but with little sense of the land or its people, they turn to a local guide: Kate Shugak, an Aleut investigator recently resigned from the District Attorney’s office.

  Kate is reluctant, scarred both literally and emotionally from a case gone wrong, but her knowledge of the terrain—and the tight-lipped communities who live on it—makes her indispensable. As she tracks the trail of the missing men across snowbound villages and treacherous mountains, she uncovers layers of silence, loyalty, and old resentments.

  Stabenow’s novel launches her long-running series with a blend of rugged landscape and equally rugged characters. Through Kate’s eyes, Alaska is not a picturesque backdrop but a crucible where survival, justice, and belonging intertwine. A Cold Day for Murder introduces a heroine whose resilience is matched only by the unforgiving beauty of the land she calls home.

  Registration opens on Saturday, 08 November.

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 29 November, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  
  

  Show details
• LD131 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    13 Dec 2025
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    10

  Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

   “Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.”  -Carl Sandburg

  Program Description:

  Tea and Tattered Pages is a multi-faceted program designed to bring poetry closer to the fore in our lives, and perhaps create a small community around it. Our activities include reading, writing, discussing, reciting, and trying to live poetry.

  There will be no fixed agenda for events; rather, forthcoming events will usually be decided by vote as we move through the year, and published as things are decided. You can get a sense of what sorts of activities we will be doing on the program's web page:

  Tea and Tattered Pages

  December Agenda

  The December agenda will be decided at the November meeting, and posted on Sunday, 09 November (when registration for the December meeting opens).

  General Guidelines

  In general, registration for each activity will open the day after the previous activity finishes. Registration for the December meeting will open on Sunday, 09 November.

  If you have any questions, please contact literature@wice-paris.org

  Our Poet-in-Residence: Heather Hartley

  

  Heather Hartley’s poetry collections include Adult Swim and Knock Knock, both published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She was Paris Editor for Tin House magazine for over fifteen years.

  Her short fiction, poems, essays and interviews have appeared in or on PBS Newshour, The Guardian, The Literary Review and other venues. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent’s (UK) Paris School of Arts and Culture and has also taught at the American University of Paris and the University of Texas El Paso MFA program.

  www.heatherhartleyink.com

  Show details
• LD181 Living Room Players: To be announced

  • When
    18 Dec 2025
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    8

  

  The December play has not been chosen yet. 

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  ---

  
  

  The general concept of The Living Room Players is that people receive the script by email about a week before the reading, and then roles are assigned at the meeting. Attendees sit around a living room and simply read their parts with as much theatrical flourish as they care to give (but there are no expectations of real acting).
  

  The readings generally take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number will be sent in the two reminder emails.

  Registration for the December reading opens on Friday, 27 November.

  
  

  Show details
• LD191 Café Littéraire: The Great Meaulnes (“Le Grand Meaulnes”), Alain Fournier

  • When
    19 Dec 2025
  •  
    3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    To be announced
  • Spaces left
    10

  

  The Great Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier, is a haunting coming-of-age novel that blends youthful idealism with nostalgia and loss. Narrated by François Seurel, the story follows the enigmatic Augustin Meaulnes, a charismatic student who stumbles upon a mysterious, dreamlike estate and falls in love with the elusive Yvonne de Galais. Meaulnes becomes obsessed with finding the estate and reclaiming that fleeting moment of enchantment. Set in the French countryside at the turn of the 20th century, the novel explores themes of lost innocence, romantic yearning, and the disillusionment that often follows the pursuit of idealized dreams. Alain-Fournier, who died in World War I shortly after the novel’s publication, infused his only work with a sense of tragic beauty and emotional depth that continues to resonate with readers today.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 17 December, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  
  

  The book group meets at the organizer's apartment. The directions, door code, telephone number, etc., are sent in the 7-day and 1-day reminder emails, following registration.

  Registration for the December meeting opens on 25 November 2025.

  Show details