A celebration of the legacy of the Village Voice bookshop in Paris, founded by Odile Hellier in 1982--a hub of social life and a refuge for artists, writers, and anglophone literary life for over three decades until it closed in 2012. This collective memoir brings to life a literary history of a heady time in Paris, capturing a myriad of voices for whom "literature was not just a pastime but the very stuff of life." Village Voices is a collective memoir that brings to life the authors, publishers, and friends who frequented one of the most famous English-Language bookstores in Paris--the Village Voice bookshop. Founded by Odile Hellier in 1982, Village Voice was a hub for artists, writers, and anglophone literary life for over three decades. Told through the voices of artists that were reckoning, preserving, challenging, and archiving the time and languages that they lived in, this carefully curated collection, organized thematically, encapsulates some of the most important reflections and debates of 20th century literary history. From Allen Ginsberg to Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Raymond Carver, and Amy Tan, Hellier preserves the decades-long vibrant readings and dialogues that took place in this tiny bookshop on the Rue Princesse. Hellier mines decades of archival footage to present anecdotes and insight from the spontaneous and informal exchanges that occurred among generations of literary and cultural icons. These artists present a multidimensional landscape of Parisian literary history in dialogue with American and global literary conversation. The book is a life-long curatorial project, a conversation across time, and a historical archive, created by a bookseller seeking to preserve the history of her much-loved bookstore.
A celebration of the legacy of the Village Voice bookshop in Paris, founded by Odile Hellier in 1982--a hub of social life and a refuge for artists, writers, and anglophone literary life for over three decades until it closed in 2012. "My entire sense of Paris centers on Odile and the bookshop." --Richard Ford
In July of 1982, on a quiet boulevard just off the bustling Boulevard Saint-German, Odile Hellier opened the Village Voice Bookshop. Over the next three decades, the blue-shuttered shop would become one of the most famous English-language bookstores in Paris--a vivacious hub for artists, writers, and a haven for anglophone literary life. After the its closing, Odile found herself with hundreds of tapes of various<