Shakespeare and Company Bookshop: a Bridge for Literature and Community

A Conversation with Sylvia Whitman

Authors

  • Sylvia Whitman
  • Amanda Dennis

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18422/79-2834

Abstract

no abstract

Author Biographies

Sylvia Whitman

Sylvia Whitman is the owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore together with her partner David Delannet. Born in Paris in 1981 and educated in Edinburgh, she studied the History of Eastern Europe at University College London. In 2004, she took over management of the bookstore from her father, George Whitman, who opened the shop on rue de la Bûcherie, in 1951. In 2003, she created the first Shakespeare and Company literary festival, “Lost, Beat and New: Three Generations of Literature in Paris.” This was followed in 2006 by the founding of FestivalandCo, a recurring literary festival, each year focusing on a particular genre: “Travel in Words” (2006), “Real Lives: Exploring Memoir and Biography” (2008), and “Storytelling & Politics” (2010). In 2010 and 2012, Shakespeare and Company hosted a novella contest for unpublished writers. In 2016, the bookshop launched a publishing house, Shakespeare and Company Paris. Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, features more than 300 images from the bookstore’s archives, along with contributions from Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Jim Morrison, Kate Tempest, Ethan Hawke, and many others.

Amanda Dennis

Amanda Dennis is a Paris-based writer and author of a novel, Her Here, a work of literary criticism, Beckett and Embodiment, and a philosophical exploration of early motherhood, A Mother’s Discourse. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other places. She has held fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia and Cambridge Universities, and UC Berkeley. She co-founded and now co-directs the MFA in creative writing at the American University of Paris.

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Published

2026-09-24

How to Cite

Whitman, Sylvia, and Amanda Dennis. “Shakespeare and Company Bookshop: A Bridge for Literature and Community: A Conversation With Sylvia Whitman”. New American Studies Journal: A Forum, vol. 79, Sept. 2026, doi:10.18422/79-2834.

Issue

Vol. 79 (2026): Paris Anglophone Writing: a Special NASJ Issue

Section

A Tale of Two Bookstores

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Göttingen University Press, Göttingen

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.