Archive Text: New Yorker Staff Writer Lauren Collins will read from her new memoir, When in French: Love in a Second Language. In her early thirties while living in London, Collins met and fell in love with a Frenchman. Their relationship was entirely in English, and Collins began to wonder what it might mean to love someone in a second language? When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages and what they say about who we are. Lauren Collins, a staff writer at the New Yorker, is currently based in Europe, covering stories from London, Paris, Copenhagen, and beyond.

“Lauren Collins is one of the smartest, most humane, most charming writers I know. Nobody is more observant of fine details, or more curious about the big picture. In When in French, we finally see her mad skills and effortless touch on display in a book-length memoir— a love story about a person, a language, and a whole form of cultural knowledge. Collins makes the world seem like a bigger, more effervescent, more intoxicating place. “—Elif Batuman