We are so happy to speak with Kerri Maher, author of The Paris Bookseller. Based on the life of Sylvia Beach—bookseller, publisher and entrepreneur—this novel brings 1920s Paris to life in the most gorgeous, delicious ways. If you’ve been looking for a work that’s both escapist (the food! The love story! The writers!!) and will also feel like (easy, fun) learning, this is the book for you.

Fans of Joyce, Stein, Pound, Hemingway, and (many!) more will be pleased to see these familiar faces come to life on the pages of her book.

We discuss everything from vivid descriptions with small word count, to the many “apprentice” novels Kerri will never publish, to the politics of publishing then and now.

Kerri says:

My first novel, The Kennedy Debutante, came out in 2018, and my second in 2020: The Girl In White Gloves: A Novel of Grace Kelly. My third, The Paris Bookseller, about trailblazing entrepreneur Sylvia Beach and the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, is coming in early 2022.  I’ll also have another historical novel coming your way from Berkley in 2023, a fact that makes me feel incredibly lucky and grateful after spending so many years (and years!) writing and working on the craft.  If you want to know more about those years, check out my memoir This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World (Writer’s Digest Books) under the name Kerri Majors. I am also the founder of an award-winning journal of YA literature, YARN.

Learn more about her here: https://www.kerrimaher.com/