Originally from Montreal, Lisa Pasold is a writer and journalist who now divides her time between Paris and Toronto.

She’s published two books of poetry (with a third forthcoming), a novel (with a second in the works), and written for numerous newspapers, magazines, and guidebooks including Time Out, Fodor’s, The Globe and Mail, and more.

In advance of her October 4 talk on travel writing at the American Library in Paris, I caught up with Lisa to get the inside scoop on writing, revising, and her many adventures abroad.

How does the city of Paris itself influence you as a writer?
Paris is a good city for writers. People care about literature here and support wonderful independent bookshops. And the media actually discusses serious books as well as the bestseller airplane ones! I love the uproar Sarkozy caused by criticizing Mme de Lafayette’s 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves—considered one of the first psychological novels, a great very readable classic. I can’t imagine another country where people would immediately organize public readings of the novel to protest their president’s ignorance! I didn’t move to Paris to become Ernest Hemingway—I think I’d rather be Colette, she seems to have had more fun—but the legacy of expat writers has inspired me and given me a sense of possibility.

Can you talk about how you approach deep revisions? Is it in this phase that you learn in fact what it is that you have created – and how to strengthen that vision?
Revising lets me get further into the world I’m trying to create in the work. Journalism has been a great discipline, because it taught me to get on with the job, to not be precious about the work, to believe in the process of revision. I’m someone who rarely gets it right the first time, and I’m constantly fascinated by how much a piece of writing can change.

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