Mary Duncan on The Paris Writers Group, Press and Atelier

Mary Duncan is the author of Henry Miller Is Under My Bed: People and Places on the Way to Paris, a lively and thoughtful memoir of a fascinating life. A few months ago Janet Hulstrand interviewed Mary for Bonjour Paris: you can read that interview here. This follow-up interview focuses on Mary’s work as founder of the Paris Writers Group, the Paris Writers Press and the Paris Writers Atelier.

Mary, when did you start the Paris Writers Group, and more importantly, why did you? What are some of the most exciting things that have come out of it, from your point of view? And is this group open to new members? 

In San Diego, I belonged to the San Diego Writing Women and I really missed them after I started spending more time in Paris. In June 2008, I invited three or four writers to meet in my apartment to create the Paris Writers Group; I believe that “Birds of a feather flock together.” Gradually, we grew to around 30 members. We are a support group: we discuss agents, publishers, marketing, our writing projects, our problems. We celebrate our successes and drown our failures in champagne. We don’t read or critique our work. Basically, we are writers meeting and learning from other writers. 

Each person has three minutes to discuss their writing. Our three-minute egg-timer keeps us within our meeting’s two-hour time frame. New writers are admitted as members move from France, change their interest, or die. We have a waiting list. 

In 2022, we created the Paris Writers Atelier, a permanent space that can seat 25 people, on the rue de la Bûcherie, near Shakespeare and Company. We host small literary events, and we have a wish list of writers we would like to host there. George Saunders is at the top of my list. 

Last summer you worked on creating a video that explains the history and describes some of the activities of the Paris Writers Group and the Paris Writers Atelier. It is now available for viewing on your YouTube channel. Can you tell us more about this?

We launched this 30-minute documentary about the Paris Writer’s Group and the atelier in July 2025. It features talented writers who live in Paris and prominent guests we’ve had at the atelier in a series of colorful interviews, along with snippets from some of our literary events. 

To date we have had over 60,000 views on our channel. We are now expanding the content with new videos about Ted Joans, the surrealist poet, and more interviews from our Henry Miller archives. James Halfacre and Max Tuana, our creative videographers, are very busy working on this project.

You also have some interesting archival materials that you’re taking care of. Do you want to tell us about that? How do you see the role of safeguarding such materials for writers — and for readers and the general public as well? 

Being in the right place at the right time has been key to our acquisitions. In 1991, I went with George Whitman to Simone de Beauvoir’s apartment to purchase her English language library from her estate. Out of the 250 books George purchased, I bought five for myself. Each of them was inscribed by the author to Simone. Included were Gloria Steinem, Upton Sinclair, Kate Millett, Max Lerner and Nelson Algren. 

The Algren book is important because it shows that he and De Beauvoir were still on good terms in 1956, after he publicly criticized her for writing about them in The Mandarins. Steinem and Millett praised and thanked Beauvoir for her friendship and her contributions to the women’s movement in their inscriptions. 

Our largest archive relates to Henry Miller. Bradley Smith, who was a friend of mine, wrote two books with Henry, and he taped over 12 hours of interviews with Henry. After Bradley died in 1997, I purchased the rights to these tapes as well as many photographs. Excerpts of some of this are shared on my YouTube Channel. 

The most important book is a 2,000-page copy of Henry’s typed and annotated drafts of Tropic of Cancer. It weighs 15 pounds and includes material that Henry deleted from the final manuscript. 

Story of O, or Histoire d’O, which was published in 1954, is one of France’s most controversial erotic novels. It’s controversial because of the content; because the author’s identity was unknown for many years; and because of the poor quality of the first translation, and the hidden identities of the second and third translators. We have a copy of the second translation, by Austryn Wainhouse, who also translated the Marquis de Sade. 

We enjoy sharing these things with our guest speakers. Kate Kirkpatrick, the author of Becoming Beauvoir, said she was thrilled to hold the Algren book in her hands. There is something very tactile and emotional about absorbing the aura of literary treasures that belonged to people we admire, and are a part of history.  

We keep these things in a secure location. At some point, they’ll become part of a larger archive. 

How about the Paris Writers Press? When and why did you start that venture, and what would you like people to know about it? 

In 2008, Starhaven, a small UK literary press, published the first edition of my memoir, Henry Miller Is Under My Bed. Three years later, I asked Chip Martin, an excellent publisher, if we could create a second edition with photos, a new cover and some additional material. He was interested, but he didn’t have time to do it. So I purchased the rights to the book, started the Paris Writers Press, and published a new edition. Then other writers asked if I would help them with new editions of their books. I knew very little about the publishing business; it was a very steep learning curve that involved hiring translators, cover designers, keeping track of royalties and expenses, and working with authors, bookstores and distributors. 

We have kept five excellent books in print. But the biggest joy has been meeting and becoming friends with three writers who have since passed away. One was Jean-Jacques Pauvert, the prominent French publisher and writer who published the works of the Marquis de Sade and Story of O. Pauvert fought and won battles with the censors to get that published. Austryn Wainhouse was the second translator of Story of O. His wife, Deborah Clayton Wainhouse (“Silver”), who is a member of our Paris Writers Group, has shared his journals with us. These journals discussed his working relationships with famous literary figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Monod, Maurice Girodias, Dominique Aury and Samuel Beckett.  

And David Burke, author of Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light, was a friend and active member of the Paris Writers Group. His book is a guide to writers who made Paris their home.

How can writers living in Paris — or writers just passing through — be involved with the Paris Writers Atelier? 

When we have space, we try to accommodate guest writers at our events. Those who are interested can drop me an email with a paragraph about what they have written, or are writing, and a link to their website if they have one. Currently we do not have openings for new members. Paris does have several other writers’ groups that are accepting writers; you can find them on the internet. 

What are some of the most exciting events you’ve held at the Paris Writers Atelier recently? And what is on the horizon for upcoming events? 

Kate Kirkpatrick dazzled us with the topic she presented, “From Scandal to Success: Beauvoir’s years on the rue de la Bûcherie.” Odile Hellier, author of Village Voices: A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookshop, 1982-2012, highlighted the many stimulating evenings many of us had spent at The Village Voice, her famous bookstore on the Left Bank. Samuel Lopez-Barrantes soothed us with his piano music and his singing, and then read us excerpts from Requisitions, his new novel. Xiaolu Guo has appeared three times to tell us about her two award-winning films, and her book Call Me Ishmaelle, her retelling of Moby Dick.

Our first event, in 2022, featured Pulitzer Prize winner Matthieu Aikin, along with New Yorker writer Luke Mogelson, and Andrew Quilty, a war photographer. Two events scheduled so far for 2026 are visits from Janine di Giovanni, Executive Director of The Reckoning Project, which documents war crimes, and Carol Mastrangelo Bové author of Colette and the Incest Taboo: That Most Disturbing of Drives.

“We equip local researchers and journalists to document war crimes, transforming testimony into a foundation for accountability…by combining legal vigor with the power of human storytelling,” Janine says. It was Janine’s experiences as a war correspondent, and the injustices she witnessed, that motivated her to create The Reckoning Project. She has written articles and books about her work in Bosnia, Syria, Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa, and Chechnya.

According to Alice Jardine, Research Professor at Harvard University, Colette and the Incest Taboo highlights “the bisexuality and unconscious incestuous desires at the heart of some of Colette’s most admired novels…Bové illuminates brilliantly the complexities of the incest taboo at the heart of Colette’s imagination, with striking implications for our understanding of modernism as well as for debates today about power and sexuality.” Carol will discuss with us how writers can, and have, dealt with sensitive and controversial sexual issues in their work: for example, Simone de Beauvoir and her views on monogamy.

Can you tell us about the book you’re currently working on? 

My current book focuses on the literary and cultural history of a small street on the Left Bank. More than 20 writers, publishers, war survivors, and scientists lived and worked there. Great literary works were spawned behind these stone walls. I plan to have it completed by August 2026.