Summer Residency in Paris: (Most of) The Details You’ve Been Waiting For

By Katy Yocom, Spalding School of Writing Associate Director of Communications and Alumni Relations

This is the time of year when students and alums start sending me GIFs of impatient cats, with captions like “Me watching my email for news about Paris.”

I know you’re eager to make your plans. I swear we’re not holding out on you; we’re just putting the final touches on the residency. And in that spirit, even though final details are still in progress, here’s what I can tell you.

Our dates. We’ll arrive in Paris July 6 and depart July 16. Since flights from the States are generally overnight, plan to leave the U.S. on July 5 … or earlier, if you want to build in a day or two to adjust to the time change.

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  Lamar Giles

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  K.L. Cook

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  Charlie Schulman

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  Maggie Smith

Our faculty. Our Paris faculty includes K.L. Cook (prose), Maggie Smith (poetry), Lamar Giles (writing for children and young adults), and Charlie Schulman (writing for TV, screen, and stage).

Hotel André Latin

Our hotel. We’re staying at the Hotel André Latin, in the Fifth Arrondisement, one of the oldest parts of Paris. The hotel is classic Paris: small, with just 68 rooms, but happily with two elevators (and air conditioning). It’s been recently renovated, and everyone on TripAdvisor is talking about the cocktail bar. Guest rooms—in true Parisian manner—range from cozy to itty bitty.

Our classroom space. We’ll be studying at Montparnasse Rencontres, which translates as Montparnasse Meetings (not Montparnasse Dating, as Google sometimes seems to think).

The walk between our hotel and classroom space. It’s about twenty minutes’ walk on a route that takes you along the southern edge of Luxembourg Gardens. Or take a different route on the way back from classes and stop off for a drink at the gorgeous Hemingway Bar at La Closerie des Lilas.

La Closerie des Lilas

Our cultural excursions. We’ll spend an afternoon on a guided walking tour of Black history in and around Luxembourg Gardens. We’ll visit the sculptures at the intimate Rodin Museum and the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections at the Musee d’Orsay.

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  Loïs Malois Jones (National Archive)

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  Richard Wright
  (photo credit: Library of Congress)

A day trip outside Paris will take us to Monet’s gardens at Giverny and to Auvers sur Oise, the village where Cezanne, Van Gogh, and other artists lived and worked. Though most evenings will be free, we’ll take in an opera performance in the splendor of the Palais Garnier and enjoy a dinner cruise on the Seine. A free day gives you time to visit museums or other Paris sights on your person bucket list. And you’ll have a choice of optional activities to consider, such as a cooking class and a wine-and-cheese tasting.

Giverny

Our group. As always, the trip is open to Spalding School of Writing students, alumni, family, and friends. Alumni interested in further study have the option of taking our new Post-Master’s Certificate in Writing Enrichment. For prospective students, our early placement deadline is February 1; we recommend applying for admission by that date in order to secure a slot in the residency if accepted.

We are finalizing the price and online enrollment portal now–we’re aiming to open travel enrollment before the university break begins on December 21. Current students and alumni will receive an email with full details. Prospective students, please email me at kyocom@spalding.edu.

Hope to see you in Paris!

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Katy Yocom’s novel Three Ways to Disappear won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature and was named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite. She is a 2019 recipient of the Al Smith Fellowship for artistic excellence from the Kentucky Arts Council. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism have appeared in Newsweek, LitHub, Salon, American Way in-flight magazine, Terrain.org,The Louisville Review, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a recipient of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

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