With Paris as a backdrop in their newest respective books, join authors Anne-christine d'Adesky and Renate Stendhal for a Bastille Day conversation.

THE POX LOVER: A DECADE IN NEW YORK AND PARIS
Called “a masterpiece” by Michelle Tea, d'Adesky's new memoir, The Pox Lover, is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris. Traveling as a journalist to Paris, an insomniac d’Adesky trolls the Seine, encountering waves of exiles fleeing violence in the Balkans, Haiti, and Rwanda. As the last of the French Nazis stand trial and the new National Front rises in the polls, d’Adesky digs into her aristocratic family’s roots in Vichy France and colonial Haiti. 

Anne-christine d’Adesky is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who reported on the global AIDS epidemic for New York Native, OUT, The Nation, and The Village Voice. She received the first Award of Courage from amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. She was an early member of ACT UP and cofounder of the Lesbian Avengers.

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KISS ME AGAIN, PARIS: A MEMOIR

Best-known for her photo-biography of Gertrude Stein, Lambda Literary Award–winner Renate Stendhal's memoir "Kiss Me Again, Paris" recalls a time in 1970s Paris when women were in fashion and every woman, gay or straight, fell in love with women. Recently escaped from her German family and student husband, Stendhal ekes out a living as a cultural journalist in Europe’s most cultured city. She walks Paris at night dressed as a boy, has friends and lovers among artists and writers. There are mysteries with and without clues: Is sexual obsession a way to avoid the risk of love?

Renate Stendhal is a senior cultural critic for the International Magazine for Arts and Media, Scene4, keeps a Gertrude Stein blog Quoting Gertrude Stein, and is a blogger for The Huffington Post. She also serves as a provost for UIL (University of Integrative Learning).