When Emily posted her last update on here, some four years ago now, to mark the publication of her new book Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice, we were both living and working in and around London. In recent months, we’ve each made huge changes to our lives. I’ve moved to rural North Wales and Emily has moved to North America. In our mid-forties, we’re once again nurturing our friendship over a long distance – just as we did during our mid-twenties.
It’s long-distance friendships with literary women that allow me to invite you to the Ruppin Agency’s third annual Paris writing retreat. My friend Jacqueline, founder of Véranda Association Culturelle, hosts the retreat in her stylish venue in the 15th arrondissement. I’m so grateful to Jacqueline for introducing me to this glorious corner of Paris – walking distance from the Eiffel Tower and yet a neighbourhood of real Parisians.
When you open the unassuming front door of the secret retreat venue, you step into a light-filled orangery where we hold the morning warm-up and late-afternoon cool-down workshop sessions to get you into the writing zone and help you reflect on what you’ve written. We keep the group sizes small so that we can shape all our activities to each participant’s needs.
I love walking through the retreat venue during the daytime seeing participants writing independently at desks in the library or in private studies in the cave and penthouse. The creative energy is palpable. And the real treat for me and my husband Jonathan Ruppin, an editor and former agent, is meeting one-to-one with participants in the garden studio, where we delve deep into each participant’s projects and processes.
It was another literary friend, Saara, who first introduced us to Jacqueline. Jonathan and Saara had worked together for years at Foyles independent bookshop before Saara moved to Paris, where she started up Magical History Tours. Saara’s literary excursions are always a highlight of our retreat.
I’ve witnessed many a new friendship form while Saara gives us an insider’s glimpse of Paris’ literary scene – antiquarian book markets, writers’ hangouts, hidden reading rooms. The conversations we have over retreat breakfasts and lunches, and the work we share during our welcome drinks reception and farewell readings event, are the kernel of friendships that continue to grow once the retreat has come to an end. The most joyful aspect of running these retreats is watching literary shoots reach out across continents – a Texan novelist meeting up via Zoom with a short story writer from London; a self-help writer from Poland sharing drafts with a memoirist from San Francisco; an American essayist who has long lived in Paris meeting in a local café with a Brit who has also made her home in one of the world’s most literary cities.
If you’d like to learn more about the Ruppin Agency’s Paris Retreat, you can hear Emma and Jonathan on World Radio Paris. To nab a last-minute spot on the upcoming retreat, email Emma at studio@ruppinagency.com and mention Something Rhymed or quote Paris100 to get your £100 discount.
Something Rhymed 