UPCOMING EVENTS

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• LM091 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    09 Mar 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • 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 seat opens up.

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  Stories for Monday, March 9: 

  • Kanak Kapur, “The Ice-Skater,” December 28, 2025
  • Allegra Goodman, “Deal-Breaker,” January 4, 2026
  • Joseph O’Neill, “Light Secrets,” January 18, 2026

  
  

  
  

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• LM101 Classic Mysteries: "The Daughter of Time", by Josephine Tey

  • When
    10 Mar 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  Register

  The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, is a clever, unconventional detective novel that turns historical mystery into a gripping intellectual puzzle. Laid up in the hospital and bored, Inspector Alan Grant becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard III and is struck by how unlike a villain he appears. Grant begins a “bedside investigation,” digging through chronicles, letters, and historical accounts to test the centuries-old claim that Richard murdered his young nephews in the Tower of London. As he weighs propaganda, politics, and Tudor mythmaking, the case becomes less about a single king’s guilt than about how history itself is written—and distorted. Quiet, slyly funny, and deeply absorbing, The Daughter of Time transforms armchair research into suspense, inviting readers to rethink what they think they know and to consider whether the truth of the past can ever be recovered from the stories we’ve inherited.

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 03 March, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration opens on Wednesday, 11 February.

  
  

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• LM141 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    14 Mar 2026
  •  
    2:30 PM - 5:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    5

  Register

  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

  March Agenda

  This is the third of four sessions aimed at producing the one poem everyone might have inside themselves that has been longing to get written.

  In February Anna Eklund-Cheong provided an introduction to classic three-line, 17-syllable Japanese haiku, and attendees endeavored to distill the essence of their poem into a haiku.

  In this session, Heather Hartley will lead the class into using that haiku as a start point for further development of the poetic idea.

  Registration opens on Sunday, 15 February.

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

  Instructors:

  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

  Anna Eklund-Cheong

  Anna has published over 130 haiku in nineteen haiku journals since 2015. She has received Honorable Mention, Golden Haiku Contest, Washington, DC (2018); Runner-up, Golden Haiku Contest, Washington, DC (2015, 2016, and 2017).  Her poems have appeared in Frogpond, The Heron's Nest, Blithe Spirit, Presence, Hedgerow, Acorn, Failed Haiku, cattails, and tinywords, among other publications. In October 2025, her collection Little Acorns was published.

  Website: Anna Eklund-Cheong - Paris Haiku

  
  

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• LM191 Living Room Players: "Home I'm Darling," by Laura Wade

  • When
    19 Mar 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • 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 is a seat opens up.

  Judy is a picture-perfect ‘50s housewife. She spends her days making the perfect devilled eggs, mixing the perfect Screwdrivers and being the perfect homemaker to her husband Johnny. They’re totally happy with their pastel-hued life. The only problem is, it’s not the 1950s, it is now, and Judy and Johnny’s dream world is starting to come apart at the perfectly sewn seams. This is a brilliant comedy about gender, nostalgia and modernity.
  

  Home, I'm Darling won the 2019 Olivier Award for Best Comedy.

  

  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 February reading opens on Friday, 20 February.

  
  

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• LM201 Café Littéraire: "The Negotiator," by Francis Walder

  • When
    20 Mar 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the 11th. Details will be sent after registration.
  • Spaces left
    8

  Register

  

  The Negotiator: The Masterclass at Saint-Germain, by Francis Walder, is a richly detailed historical novel that transforms diplomacy into high-stakes drama. Set in 1570, as France is riven by brutal wars of religion, the story follows Henri de Malassise, a seasoned royal negotiator summoned by Catherine de Médicis to broker a fragile peace between Catholics and Huguenots. The talks at Saint-Germain—real negotiations with real historical consequences—unfold as a tense battle of wills, strategy, and psychological insight rather than swords or armies.

  Malassise must read motives as carefully as words, weighing apparent divisions among the Huguenots and questioning whether they signal weakness or cunning design. Personal complications intrude as well, including the arrival of his enigmatic Huguenot cousin, whose presence blurs the line between private loyalty and public duty. Drawing on his own experience in military and diplomatic service, Walder gives the negotiations a striking authenticity, capturing the exhaustion, moral compromise, and subtle maneuvering that shape political outcomes.

  Elegant and intelligent, The Negotiator is part historical novel, part study in power and persuasion. A strong discussion angle is how Walder reveals negotiation itself as a form of conflict—one in which language, patience, and judgment determine the fate of nations.

  "The Negotiator" won the Prix Goncourt in 1958. 

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 15 March, 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 March meeting opens on Saturday, 21 February.

  Show details
• LM271 Booker Books: Book "The Land in Winter," by Andrew Miller

  • When
    27 Mar 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Upstairs at Le Nelson's, 16 Rue Coquillière, 75001
  • Spaces left
    7

  Register

  

  The Land in Winter is a quietly powerful novel set during the brutal winter of 1962–63, one of the coldest on record in England. In a snowbound village in the West Country, two married couples—each carrying private disappointments, desires, and unspoken tensions—find their lives increasingly entangled as the weather isolates them from the outside world. Against this frozen landscape, small decisions and chance encounters begin to reverberate in unexpected ways.

  As the cold deepens, the novel becomes an intimate study of marriage, longing, and moral uncertainty, exploring how people endure emotional isolation as much as physical hardship. Andrew Miller’s prose is restrained and atmospheric, using the extreme conditions of the winter to strip his characters down to their essential vulnerabilities. Subtle, humane, and quietly devastating, the novel examines how moments of crisis can expose both the fragility of relationships and the possibility—however tentative—of change.

  The Land in Winter won the 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by five days prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the March meeting opens on Saturday, 28 February.

  
  

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• LM281 Left Bank Lit: Being Geniuses Together, by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle

  • When
    28 Mar 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    3

  Register

  Robert McAlmon’s Being Geniuses Together is one of the most candid insider accounts of the expatriate world that flourished in 1920s Paris. McAlmon—writer, publisher, and close friend to Hemingway, Joyce, Stein, and Pound—spent a decade at the center of the Left Bank’s literary ferment. Originally published in 1938 and later expanded by Kay Boyle, the book blends memoir, sketches, and portraits of the extraordinary constellation of artists who defined the modernist era. McAlmon’s voice is wry, weary, and unsentimental; he strips away the mythic glow surrounding the “Lost Generation,” revealing instead a community of ambitious, restless, and often self-destructive creators. His accounts of evenings at cafés, of failed manuscripts and fragile friendships, convey both the freedom and the futility that shadowed those years. Where Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast celebrates the memory of Paris and Barnes’s Nightwood transforms it into dream, McAlmon’s Being Geniuses Together records it as lived experience—vivid, cynical, and unvarnished. The result is a rare, firsthand chronicle of a moment when the boundaries between art and life blurred in the smoky rooms and long nights of the Left Bank.

  Due to the length of the book, we will be focusing on the following chapters, which relate to the other readings we are doing in this series:

  • McAlmon 1920-1921 (Ch. 1)
  • Boyle 1922-1923 (Ch. 2)
  • Boyle 1923 (Ch. 4)
  • McAlmon 1922-1923 (Ch. 9)
  • Boyle 1926-1928 (Ch. 16)
  • McAlmon 1924-1925 (Ch. 17)
  • McAlmon 1925-1926 (Ch. 19)
  • Boyle 1928-1930 (Ch. 26)

  

  Note: This book is mildly challenging to find. We have a PDF version that is available at this link:

  Being Geniuses Together

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 21 March, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  The book group meets in the downstairs of the Impact Café.

  Registration for the March meeting opens on Sunday, 01 March.

  
  

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• LA031 Murder, They Read: "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead," by Olga Tokarczuk

  • When
    03 Apr 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  Register

  Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) follows Janina Duszejko, an eccentric, astrology-obsessed woman living in a remote Polish village near the Polish border. A former engineer and part-time teacher, she cares deeply about animals. When several local men—hunters and officials involved in animal cruelty—are found dead under mysterious circumstances, Duszejko becomes convinced the animals are taking revenge. As the authorities dismiss her theories, she investigates on her own, interpreting events through astrology and William Blake’s poetry. The story blends dark humor, ecological themes, and mystery while questioning justice, human domination of nature, and society’s treatment of those considered outsiders.

  

  The "Murder, They Read" book group offers members the chance to explore the mystery form—from classic sleuths and gritty detectives to unconventional investigators and amateur gumshoes.

  A compelling mystery is selected for each month's reading and discussion, with an eye toward strong writing, memorable characters, and inventive plotting. From contemporary noir to historical mysteries, the group’s selections will span subgenres, eras, locales and cultures, offering something for longtime mystery lovers and curious newcomers alike.

  Discussions—held in English—delve into themes, character development, setting, and of course, the crime itself. The goal is not just to guess the culprit, but, through the eyes of the sleuth, to benefit from a literary immersion into another time, place, and/or culture;  to appreciate how the author constructs the mystery and what the story reveals about the world it portrays. And of course  to enjoy time spent with others who love the mystery genre.

  Selections are chosen with these criteria in mind:

  • Available in English (paper or ebook)

  • Standalone/can be read on it’s own, or first in a series

  • Rich in atmosphere, character, or setting

  • Offers an unexpected perspective

  

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

  Registration opens on Saturday, 07 March.

  
  

  Show details
• LA111 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    11 Apr 2026
  •  
    2:30 PM - 5:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    14

  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

  April Agenda

  This is the fourth of four sessions aimed at producing the one poem everyone might have inside themselves that has been longing to get written.

  In February Anna Eklund-Cheong provided an introduction to classic three-line, 17-syllable Japanese haiku, and attendees endeavored to distill the essence of their poem into a haiku.

  In March, Heather Hartley led the class into using that haiku as a start point for further development of the poetic idea.

  In this session we will polish the final poem and share them.

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

  Instructors:

  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
• LA131 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    13 Apr 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 13 April will be announced on or about 10 March.

  Registration opens on 10 March.

  
  

  Show details
• LA141 Classic Mysteries: "The Red House Mystery," by A.A. Milne

  • When
    14 Apr 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  The Red House Mystery, by A. A. Milne, is a classic Golden Age detective novel that blends ingenious plotting with wit and charm. Set in an English country house, the story begins when a wealthy recluse is found shot dead under puzzling circumstances, with doors locked, timelines muddled, and suspects behaving suspiciously. The investigation is taken up not by a professional detective but by Antony Gillingham, an observant and affable amateur sleuth, aided by his skeptical friend Bill Beverley.

  As clues accumulate and alibis unravel, Milne leads the reader through a tightly constructed mystery that pays affectionate homage to Sherlock Holmes while gently parodying the conventions of detective fiction. The novel is less concerned with grim realism than with intellectual play, inviting readers to match wits with the author as the solution slowly comes into focus. Light on violence and rich in clever dialogue, The Red House Mystery offers a satisfying puzzle and a glimpse into the early development of the country-house whodunit, revealing a different side of Milne best known today as the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh.

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 09 April, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration opens on Wednesday, 11 March.

  
  

  Show details
• LA161 Living Room Players: Play To Be Determined

  • When
    16 Apr 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    8

  The April play selection and description will be posted on or about Friday, 20 March (or before).

  

  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 take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number are sent in the 7-day and 1-day  reminder emails.

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

  Registration for the April reading opens on Friday, 20 March.

  
  

  Show details
• LA171 Café Littéraire: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    17 Apr 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the 11th. Details will be sent after registration.
  • Spaces left
    10

  

  The April book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 21 March (or before).

  The Café Littéraire book group reads and discusses—in English—books that were written in French and are available in translation. Books are chosen from across the French-speaking world, and have ranged from Flaubert's classic Madame Bovary to Amélie Nothomb's Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements) to Laurent Binet's HHhH. 

  
  

  

  
  

  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.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 15 March, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the April meeting opens on Saturday, 21 March.

  Show details
• LA241 Booker Books: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    24 Apr 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Upstairs at Le Nelson's, 16 Rue Coquillière, 75001
  • Spaces left
    11

  The April book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 28 March (or before).

  The Booker Book group reads and discusses—in English—books that have either received, or been on the short list for, the Booker Prize.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by one week prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the March meeting opens on Saturday, 28 March.

  
  

  Show details
• LA251 Left Bank Lit: "Paris Was Yesterday," by Janet (Genêt) Flanner

  • When
    25 Apr 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  Few writers observed expatriate Paris with as much wit, elegance, and insight as Janet Flanner. Her collection Paris Was Yesterday, 1925–1939 gathers selected pieces from her celebrated “Letter from Paris” column in The New Yorker, written under the pen name Genêt.

  Living in Paris for decades, Flanner chronicled the city’s transformation from the exuberant café society of the 1920s through the political tensions and cultural upheavals of the 1930s. Her dispatches capture both the glitter and the gravity of the era—portraits of artists like Picasso and Colette sit beside reports on fashion, scandal, and the rise of fascism. With her cool, incisive style and cosmopolitan detachment, Flanner stands apart from her contemporaries on the Left Bank: neither romanticizing Paris like Hemingway nor mythologizing it like Barnes, but recording it as it was—vivid, contradictory, and alive.

  Paris Was Yesterday offers an incomparable window onto the daily rhythms, personalities, and anxieties of a city—and a generation—on the edge of modern history.

  
  

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• LY011 Murder, They Read: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    01 May 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  The May book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 04 April (or before).

  WICE’s Murder, They Read book group offers members the chance to explore the mystery form—from classic sleuths and gritty detectives to unconventional investigators and amateur gumshoes.

  A compelling mystery is selected for each month's reading and discussion, with an eye toward strong writing, memorable characters, and inventive plotting. From contemporary noir to historical mysteries, the group’s selections will span subgenres, eras, locales and cultures, offering something for longtime mystery lovers and curious newcomers alike.

  Discussions—held in English—delve into themes, character development, setting, and of course, the crime itself. The goal is not just to guess the culprit, but, through the eyes of the sleuth, to benefit from a literary immersion into another time, place, and/or culture;  to appreciate how the author constructs the mystery and what the story reveals about the world it portrays. And of course  to enjoy time spent with others who love the mystery genre.

  Selections are chosen with these criteria in mind:

  • Available in English (paper or ebook)

  • Standalone/can be read on it’s own, or first in a series

  • Rich in atmosphere, character, or setting

  • Offers an unexpected perspective

  

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

  Registration opens on Saturday, 04 April.

  
  

  Show details
• LY111 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    11 May 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 11 May will be announced on or about 14 April.

  Registration opens on Tuesday, 14 April.

  
  

  Show details
• LY12 Classic Mysteries: "The Murder at the Vicarage," by Agatha Christie

  • When
    12 May 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  The Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie, is a classic country-village mystery that introduces one of Christie’s most enduring creations: Miss Jane Marple. Set in the seemingly tranquil English village of St. Mary Mead, the novel begins when the universally disliked Colonel Protheroe is found shot dead in the vicar’s study—promptly providing the village with more suspects than anyone expected.

  As gossip spreads and alibis multiply, Miss Marple quietly observes from the margins, drawing on her deep understanding of human nature to see what others overlook. Christie contrasts official police methods with Marple’s deceptively simple insights, showing how small habits, grudges, and hypocrisies can conceal darker truths. Wry, sharply observed, and ingeniously plotted, The Murder at the Vicarage blends classic detective puzzle-solving with social comedy, using village life itself as both setting and source of clues. The novel established Miss Marple as a new kind of detective—unassuming, incisive, and profoundly attuned to the moral complexities beneath everyday respectability.

  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 07 May, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration opens on Wednesday, 15 April.

  Show details
• LY151 Café Littéraire: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    15 May 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the 11th. Details will be sent after registration.
  • Spaces left
    10

  

  The May book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 18 April (or before).

  The Café Littéraire book group reads and discusses—in English—books that were written in French and are available in translation. Books are chosen from across the French-speaking world, and have ranged from Flaubert's classic Madame Bovary to Amélie Nothomb's Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements) to Laurent Binet's HHhH. 

  
  

  

  
  

  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.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 15 March, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the May meeting opens on Saturday, 18 April.

  Show details
• LY211 Living Room Players: Play To Be Determined

  • When
    21 May 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    8

  The May play selection and description will be posted on or about Friday, 17 April (or before).

  

  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 take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number are sent in the 7-day and 1-day  reminder emails.

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

  Registration for the May reading opens on Friday, 17 April.

  
  

  Show details
• LY221 Booker Books: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    22 May 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Upstairs at Le Nelson's, 16 Rue Coquillière, 75001
  • Spaces left
    11

  The May book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 25 April (or before).

  The Booker Book group reads and discusses—in English—books that have either received, or been on the short list for, the Booker Prize.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by one week prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the May meeting opens on Saturday, 25 April.

  
  

  Show details
• LY231 Left Bank Literature Walk

  • When
    23 May 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    Meeting location to be announced
  • Spaces left
    7

  

  A leisurely stroll through the 5th and 6th arrondissements, visiting sites—dwellings, cafés, bookstores—associated with the creative literary outburst that was centered here between the two World Wars.

  Sites will include (but not be limited to):

  
  

  • Ernest and Hadley Hemingway's apartment.
  • James Joyce's digs where he finished Ulysses.
  • The hotel where George Orwell lived in Down and Out in Paris and London.
  • Hemingway's morning walk to Place Saint Michel.
  • The original Shakespeare and Company.
  • The apartment where Gertrude Stein held her famous salons.

  
  

  

  
  

  Members who have attended the "Left Bank Lit" book reading group will get priority registration for this event.

  
  

  
  

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• LU051 Murder, They Read: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    05 Jun 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, lower level (salle 3), 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  

  The June book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 02 May (or before).

  WICE’s Murder, They Read book group offers members the chance to explore the mystery form—from classic sleuths and gritty detectives to unconventional investigators and amateur gumshoes.

  A compelling mystery is selected for each month's reading and discussion, with an eye toward strong writing, memorable characters, and inventive plotting. From contemporary noir to historical mysteries, the group’s selections will span subgenres, eras, locales and cultures, offering something for longtime mystery lovers and curious newcomers alike.

  Discussions—held in English—delve into themes, character development, setting, and of course, the crime itself. The goal is not just to guess the culprit, but, through the eyes of the sleuth, to benefit from a literary immersion into another time, place, and/or culture;  to appreciate how the author constructs the mystery and what the story reveals about the world it portrays. And of course  to enjoy time spent with others who love the mystery genre.

  Selections are chosen with these criteria in mind:

  • Available in English (paper or ebook)

  • Standalone/can be read on it’s own, or first in a series

  • Rich in atmosphere, character, or setting

  • Offers an unexpected perspective

  

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

  Registration opens on Saturday, 02 May.

  
  

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• LU081 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    08 Jun 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 8 June will be announced on or about 12 May.

  Registration opens on Tuesday, 12 May.

  
  

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• LU131 Tea and Tattered Pages: Adventures in Poetry

  • When
    13 Jun 2026
  •  
    2:30 PM - 5:30 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    14

  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

  June Agenda

  The June agenda has yet to be determined, but we are considering joint readings by poet-in-residence Heather Hartley and haiku writer/teacher Anna Eklund-Cheong.

  The agenda will be finalized by 9 May.

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

  Instructors:

  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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• LU181 Living Room Players: Play To Be Determined

  • When
    18 Jun 2026
  •  
    2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the Marais
  • Spaces left
    8

  The June play selection and description will be posted on or about Friday, 22 May (or before).

  

  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 take place at a member's apartment in the Marais. The address, door code, and phone number are sent in the 7-day and 1-day  reminder emails.

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

  Registration for the May reading opens on Friday, 22 May.

  
  

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• LU191 Café Littéraire: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    19 Jun 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    A member's apartment in the 11th. Details will be sent after registration.
  • Spaces left
    10

  

  The June book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 16 May (or before).

  The Café Littéraire book group reads and discusses—in English—books that were written in French and are available in translation. Books are chosen from across the French-speaking world, and have ranged from Flaubert's classic Madame Bovary to Amélie Nothomb's Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements) to Laurent Binet's HHhH. 

  
  

  

  
  

  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.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered before 15 March, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the May meeting opens on Saturday, 16 May.

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• LU261 Booker Books: Book To Be Determined

  • When
    26 Jun 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Upstairs at Le Nelson's, 16 Rue Coquillière, 75001
  • Spaces left
    11

  The June book selection and description will be posted on or about Saturday, 23 May (or before).

  The Booker Book group reads and discusses—in English—books that have either received, or been on the short list for, the Booker Prize.

  
  

  Two spaces are reserved for new WICE members. If no new WICE members have registered by one week prior to the meeting, those two spaces will become available to the general WICE membership.

  Registration for the May meeting opens on Saturday, 23 May.

  
  

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• LU271 Left Bank Lit: "The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas," by Gertrude Stein

  • When
    27 Jun 2026
  •  
    3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
  • Location
    Impact Café, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003
  • Spaces left
    11

  Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) is one of the most charming and paradoxical works of modernist literature—a memoir written by Stein, but in the voice of her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas.

  Through this playful act of ventriloquism, Stein recounts their shared life in Paris from the early 1900s through the 1930s, when their apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus became the heart of the city’s artistic avant-garde. On Saturday evenings, their salon gathered an extraordinary constellation of painters and writers—Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and many others—who came to debate, provoke, and be seen. The book mixes gossip and genius, art history and personal mythmaking, with Stein’s distinctive, rhythmic prose giving the whole an almost musical quality. Both self-portrait and social chronicle,

  The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas captures the exuberance and eccentricity of a generation inventing itself in real time. As the closing work in your series, it returns the reader to the source: the Left Bank as a living ecosystem of conversation, experiment, and friendship—a “moveable feast” of its own making.
  

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• LL131 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    13 Jul 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 13 July will be announced on or about 9 June.

  Registration opens on Tuesday, 9 June.

  
  

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• LG101 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    10 Aug 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 10 August will be announced on or about 14 July.

  Registration opens on Tuesday, 14 July.

  
  

  Show details
• LS141 The New Yorker: Short Stories

  • When
    14 Sep 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
  • Location
    Les Editeurs, 4 Carrefour de l'Odeon 75006
  • Spaces left
    9

  

  WICE’s “New Yorker Short Story Group” is for anyone interested in reading short stories and novellas written by some of today’s very best emerging and established authors. Each monthly discussion will focus on 2-3 stories recently published in the New Yorker. Selections will be announced one month prior to the next scheduled meeting.

  
  

  Stories for Monday, 14 September will be announced on or about 11 August.

  Registration opens on Tuesday, 11 August.

  
  

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