Village Voices : A Memoir of the Village Voice Bookstore, Paris, 1982-2012

A celebration of the legacy of the Village Voice bookshop in Paris, founded by Odile Hellier in 1982—a hub of social life and a refuge for artists, writers, and anglophone literary life for over three decades until it closed in 2012.

In July of 1982, on a quiet boulevard just off the bustling Boulevard Saint-German, Odile Hellier opened the Village Voice Bookshop. Over the next three decades, the blue-shuttered shop would become one of the most famous English-language bookstores in Paris—a vivacious hub for artists, writers, and a haven for anglophone literary life. After the its closing, Odile found herself with hundreds of tapes of various talks given at the bookshop by the greatest artists of their generation.

These voices from the past were the spontaneous exchanges of literary and cultural icons such as Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Allen Ginsberg, Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje, Jim Harrison, Barry Gifford, Adrienne Rich, David Sedaris, Amy Tan, Edmund White, Art Spiegelman, and Stephen Spender, all of whom were drawn to Odile’s tiny bookstore on Rue Princesse. This carefully curated historical archive is an enduring conversation across time, and a memoir of one woman’s beloved store.