— DISCIPLINE • CREATIVE WRITING
Creative
Writing
Fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and travel writing — studied in the city that shaped Hemingway, Baldwin, Fitzgerald, Stein, and every anglophone writer who ever came to Paris to find their voice.
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— PROGRAM OVERVIEW
“ The Creative Writing summer workshop brings together internationally acclaimed authors and students to study craft in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and travel writing. ”
There is no better city in the world in which to become a writer. Paris gave us Hemingway’s journalism, Baldwin’s essays, Fitzgerald’s elegies, Stein’s experiments, and Beckett’s silences — not because the city is beautiful, but because it asks you to pay attention. To the café conversations you can almost follow. To the light on the Seine at six in the evening. To the texture of a city that refuses to be background.
PAA’s Creative Writing summer workshop is built around the workshop model used in the world’s leading MFA programs. Students write every day, share work in structured critique sessions, and are guided by published authors with experience teaching at the highest level. The city itself is a constant provocation— writing assignments take students out of the classroom and into the streets, markets, museums, and cafés of Paris.
— WHAT YOU’LL WRITE
Four forms, one city
01
Fiction
Short fiction and novel extracts. Character, voice, point of view, and scene construction — the craft foundations of narrative prose.
02
Poetry
Free verse, formal structures, and the lyric essay. Attention to image, sound, compression, and the limits of what language can and cannot say.
03
Creative Nonfiction
Faculty-led expeditions to draw from life in the Louvre, the Tuileries, Montmartre, and Saint-Germain. The unique PAA practice that defines the summer program.
04
Travel Writing
The art of writing place — observation, immersion, and the ethics of the outsider gaze. Paris is the ideal subject and the ideal classroom.
— ENROLMENT
The Summer Workshop
SUMMER WORKSHOP 2026
Creative Writing Summer Workshop
A 4–6 week intensive program in July 2026. Students write daily, workshop together, and are guided by published authors across fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and travel writing. Set in Paris — the city that made modern literature.
DURATION
4–6 weeks
DATES
July 2026
FORMAT
Full-time, in person — Paris
APPLICATION DEADLINE
1 month before start date
LEVEL
All levels — beginners welcome
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A typical week
Mon
Workshop critique — fiction
Pre-submitted stories discussed in structured group critique with faculty.
Tue
Craft lecture & reading
Published author leads a discussion on point of view, voice, image, or form.
Wed
Writing from place — Paris assignment
Students write from a Parisian location — market, café, garden, or museum.
Thu
Workshop critique — poetry or nonfiction
Second weekly critique session across a different form.
Fri
Individual coaching session
One-on-one time with faculty on in-progress work — tailored to each student.
— THE TRADITION YOU’RE ENTERING
Writers who found
their voice in Paris
What these writers shared was not a nationality, a decade, or a style. They shared the conviction that Paris demanded precision of observation and honesty of voice — that the city would reward a writer who paid attention and punish one who pretended. PAA’s Creative Writing workshop places students within that tradition — using the same streets, the same cafés, and the same light as their starting point.
Ernest Hemingway Paris, 1921–1926
Wrote his first novel here. Called Paris “a moveable feast.”
James Baldwin Paris, 1948–1956
Wrote Giovanni’s Room and Notes of a Native Son in Saint-Germain.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Paris, 1924–1926
Completed The Great Gatsby. Frequented the same cafés we visit today.
Gertrude Stein Paris, 1903–1946
Her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus shaped a generation of modernist writers.
Samuel Beckett Paris, 1937–1989
Chose to write in French to strip his prose to its essential silence.
Anäis Nin Paris, 1924–1934
Her Paris diaries remain among the most vivid accounts of the city’s literary world.
“There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.”
ERNEST HEMINGWAY — A MOVEABLE FEAST, 1964
01
Write every day
Daily writing practice — short exercises, longer drafts, notebooks filled with observation. The discipline of writing is itself part of the program.
02
Workshop critique
Students submit work before each session. Peers and faculty offer structured critique — the core practice of serious literary study.
03
Read what you write
Each form is studied through its masters. Workshop discussions are grounded in the craft choices of published writers across different traditions.
04
Write from place
Assignments take students out of the classroom and into the city — cafés, markets, gardens, and bookshops as sites of observation and composition.
05
Individual coaching
One-on-one sessions with faculty on in-progress work — tailored advice for students at all stages of their writing life.
— HOW WE WORK
The workshop method
The PAA Creative Writing workshop uses the same method trusted by the world’s leading MFA programs — the workshop critique model — adapted for an intensive summer format in one of literature’s most storied cities.
Students work in small groups across all four forms, guided by instructors who are themselves published writers with experience teaching at the highest level. The intensity of the summer format means rapid development: students often finish the workshop with a draft or portfolio they would not have believed possible four weeks earlier.
“You will leave Paris with the beginning of a body of work. And you will always be writing in conversation with the city.”
“Paris is not a city you observe. It is a city that observes you — and the writer who understands that has already found their subject.”
— PAA CREATIVE WRITING — FACULTY PRINCIPLE
— STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
They joined this discipline
— APPLICATION
Write in the city that made modern literature
Applications for the Creative Writing Summer Workshop 2026 are open. All levels welcome. Deadline: one month before the start date.