The Second Paris Substack Meetup

the community shows up

photo by Augusta Sagnelli

It’s no easy task convincing writers to show up to a party of perfect strangers.

Writers tend to be insular characters, people who at their worst play into a caricature of what it means to “be a writer” (hint: the more you talk about your writing, the less likely you are to do it) and who at their best balk at the moniker of “writer,” lowering their head and uttering, “I don’t know if I’d call myself that …”

The old adage still rings true for many of us: it’s not the act of writing that’s hard so much as it is the act of sitting down to write, but the same principle can be applied to the challenge of socializing post-pandemic:

it’s not the socializing that’s hard so much as actually getting yourself out the door.

There are a lot of reasons to stay home and forego attending a gathering of perfect strangers.

For one, taking a chance on a meet-up requires leaving the soporific comfort cubes of our tiny apartments, where a good weekend for many means wearing pyjamas all day whilst delivery people deposit whatever groceries/toys/prepared meals we can dream up at our doorstep. It’s also intimidating to meet new people for the acutely self-centered reason that often, when we venture out into public, we have to act like someone worth meeting.

Yes, there is much to be said about the comfortable virtues of solitude for the average writer, but maybe it’s because it’s more draining to socialize in the post-pandemic world that we owe it to ourselves to remain open to the possibility of new experiences.

In the words of Ernest Hemingway, one of literature’s most prolific misanthropes,

“The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Yes, some people really are as good as spring itself.

The second Paris Substack Writers Meetup at La Perle proved it, and I’m grateful to everyone who braved their fears of stranger danger to help foster Paris’ burgeoning Substack community.

The Midnight Crew: Yann, yours truly, Sophia, Alex, Genevieve, Kristin (photo by Augusta)

Café La Perle is true to its name.

Its terrace is a home base for the neighborhood’s young fashionistas and handsome gay men wearing tight tee shirts and salt and pepper beards; you can also find jovial, working-class folks sipping a coffee or reading a newspaper at the zirconium bar.

Whether people come to La Perle to be seen, to people-watch with an Apérol Spritz on the terrace, or to enjoy an authentic Napolitano pizza cuite au four de pierre (made in a traditional oven), La Perle is a neighborhood gem at the intersection of the Jewish, queer, and fashion worlds that give the Marais its legendary character.

The first Paris meetup, w/ Kristen Sanders, John Baxter, Augusta Sagnelli & John Sannaee

This past December, I organized the first Paris Substack writer meet-up for a few writers at my local haunt in the 11^th (Café de l’Industrie), which included my good poet friend/Sorbonne professor

John Sannaee

, the poet

Kristin D. Sanders

, the prolific author

John Baxter

, who’s publishing his forty-fifth book this year, and my wife

Augusta Sagnelli

, who first introduced me to Substack.

For the second event, which had a guest list of seventeen Substack writers, we were going to need a bigger boat. Recently, three of my Paris-based friends have joined the community:

• Carrie Chappell
  , a published poet & editor (thanks to her I’m close to being finished with my next novel)

• Yann Rousselot
  , a published poet, friend, & literary inspiration over the past twelve years in Paris (I met him at a book swap: he gave me The Illustrated Man; I gave him The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)

• and Genevieve

  ✨ gentle chaos
  , a thoughtful writer from Canada who’s been spending time in Paris for the simple pursuit of adventure.

I also had the pleasure of talking and laughing with the renowned NY-based poet

Alex Dimitrov

, who arrived at the gathering straight from Berlin (he was even wearing some badass leather boots—I told him one day I’ll be able to pull them off). Alex and I didn’t say a single thing about our writing. Instead, we spoke as if we were old friends, and he immediately reminded me of one of my closest literary buds, the overlap neatly encapsulated in Alex’s Substack epigraph:

aesthetics over everything

At The Pearl, I also met the feminist journalist Megan Clement, who writes

Impact

. It turns out Megan is practically my Parisian neighbor, and what a pleasure it was to learn from her whilst discussing the absurdities of abortion laws across the world with an established writer who also writes for The Guardian, CNN, Bloomberg, and Al Jazeera.

And then, of course, there was

Farrah Storr

, a Substack writer as well as Head of Writer Partnerships (UK) and editor of Substack Reads, and

Sophia Efthimiatou

, who helped organize the evening.

Sophia has worked hard to bring big-name authors like

Margaret Atwood

to the platform, but she also took the time to speak us local writers about how Substack can work for us. Sophia and Farrah’s generosity, wisdom, and genuine curiosity about our literary backgrounds was invigorating, further proof that Substack is interested in cultivating a community of writers whose primary goal isn’t necessarily to become literary celebrities but rather to keep on keeping on.

Substack seems to understand that writing is just as much a lifestyle as it is a profession.

The barrier of entry to the Substack community remains beautifully simple: if you want to be a part of it, the only caveat is you enter this space with a willingness to read, write, and engage with what inspires you.

And so, at La Perle, over glasses of rosé, slices of pizza, and pints of Peroni garnished with lemon slices (why should Corona be the only beer that deserves a citrus slice?), a dozen writers from all over the world got themselves out the proverbial door and took the risk of showing up for a Substack gathering of like-minded strangers.

But instead of worrying about “networking” or theorizing how to convert free subscriptions to paid, I discussed Cavafy with Sophia and Auden with Alex and we all discussed the challenge of making rent while also trying to self-actualize as an artist; we discussed sex and drugs and marriage and open relationships and online dating and the ways in which opinions in the USA have become tantamount to ideology; we spoke about how categorical so many people are about what is Right and Wrong these days, and we spoke about the politicization of nearly everything—especially sexuality and gender and “race relations,” a term the French do not use to speak about human beings because there is only one human race. We spoke about our various upbringings, educational backgrounds, and the vast spectrum of privilege; we lamented the impossibility of having these conversations in the USA and agreed that talking about these complicated, contentious subjects remains essential.

Just 3 hours earlier, we were strangers to each other.

But there we were, laughing at midnight in the heart of the Marais, a small contingent of Substack writers already planning to do it all over again.

one for the books