July 1st - 11th, 2008
Words from the Paris Prize Winner 2008
"I am very honored to be the recipient of the first Paris Prize for Fiction.
Over its twenty-year history, the Paris Writers Workshop has earned well-deserved prestige, and the Paris Prize is a worthy addition to it.
I started writing ten years ago knowing nothing about the craft itself. I had never had a discussion on point of view or story structure or character development. I began taking writing workshops, not knowing what an amazing craft I was going to discover, as I am sure many of you are discovering this week. In 2005, I was privileged to be admitted into an intensive tutorial at the Paris Writers Workshop, and what I learned then continues to inform my work today, so I can sincerely credit the tutorial for contributing to my winning the Paris Prize this year. I am a happy alumnus!
My winning novel, entitled 'Checkpoint', is the story of an American journalist who, on the trail of a story in the Gaza Strip, unwittingly becomes an accomplice in a suicide bomb plot that weaves together the lives of an Israeli war hero, Palestinian farmer, and Christian grocer. Already the Paris Prize has made some publishers take some additional interest in it. (At least the rejection letters have been very nice!) I am very grateful for the confidence that winning the Paris Prize shows in my novel, and the additional consideration it will receive because of it. Hopefully, and happily, I will blaze a trail for future Prize winners by getting published!
I wish I could have joined you tonight, but unfortunately I could not. Best of luck. Keep writing. It's hard work, but it's not always a rejection letter in the mail!
Many thanks to WICE for hosting this Workshop and sponsoring the Paris Prize, and special thanks to Marcia Lebre for her hard work in making it all happen.
Thank you again.
Timothy Jay Smith"
Twentieth Annual Paris Writers Workshop
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Call for Photos
If you have any photographs of PWW 2008 please will you e-mail them with a caption to our web designer. Thank you.
Paris Prize for Fiction
Matt Thorne, judge of the Paris Prize, awarded the first Paris Prize for Fiction to Timothy Jay Smith at the PWW Awards Dinner on July 11.
Timothy Jay Smith is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright. He has won numerous prestigious screenwriting competitions, including contests sponsored by the Rhode Island International Film Festival, Houston WorldFest, and Hollywood Screenwriting Institute; and he won the Stanley Drama Award for a play that went on to a successful off-off-OFF-Broadway production.
In 1997, Mr. Smith left a distinguished career in international development to take up writing full-time. During that earlier career, he lived in places undergoing revolutionary changes - Poland at the end of the Cold War, Jerusalem at the start of the peace process - and was actively engaged in those changes. From those events, he's drawn many of his stories and characters.
'Checkpoint', winner of the 2008 Paris Prize, is Mr. Smith's first novel. He is represented by Shelley Power Literary Agency (London).
Our Location and the Paris Literary Tradition
The Paris Writers Workshop takes place in the heart of Montparnasse, the city’s traditional artistic and bohemian quarter.
Workshops and Courses are conducted in the relaxing atmosphere of a 19th century building built around a secluded walled garden. We’re in walking distance of the great cafes – La Coupole, Le Dome, Le Rotonde, Le Select – where Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Man Ray, Henry Miller, Kiki of Montparnasse, Lee Miller and Salvador Dali met and socialised during the 1920s and 1930s, and which, closer to our time, were patronised by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and the other writers of the Beat Generation.
