article: On a summer's evening, beside the River Seine, outside a beautifully idiosyncratic bookshop, a current crop of American creative writing students are listening to readings. These students from New York University (NYU) are in Paris for a month as part of their studies - immersing themselves in the literary culture of the French capital. Accompanied by their teaching staff, the students use the city as a giant writing workshop. The cafes, art galleries, the readings and the Parisian streets become the material for their exercises in fiction and poetry. It must be the most de-luxe cure for writers' block, while still racking up credits towards a degree. It's such an idyllic setting, listening to readings and discussions, in the shadow of Notre Dame, outside the classic Shakespeare and Company shop-front, that the only natural reaction is one of overwhelming jealousy. It's not only NYU which brings its students here. There are other universities and institutions, from the US, the UK and Australia. The Left Bank is becoming a field-trip centre for trainee bohemians. It's also a reflection of how higher education - costing up to $50,000 (Â£32,000) per year in the US - has become about experiences as much as qualifications. But what difference does this kind of Parisian trip make to their writing? "It's good to escape the familiar. You see the world fresh, often with intense clarity," says Deborah Landau, an award-winning poet and director of NYU's creative writing programme. "Paris has always been a city for writers; generations of novelists and poets have flocked to Paris seeking inspiration and literary camaraderie." And she says the students can be inspired by the "sensory pleasures" of the city - whether it's the food, wine, art, music or the small bookstores. "Lingering over coffee for hours in the cafes is absolutely encouraged." Students also have a line-up of novelists and poets to act as tutors. The university has added a "low residency" postgraduate course - taught in intensive blocks rather than full terms. 'Outside their lives' This includes five 10-day stretches in Paris - and novelist Helen Schulman says this is where it can really make a difference for students. "They're on a different hamster wheel, they're so outside of their lives. They're away from their work, their families, all the things that press upon them, they get a chance to follow their dream of writing. And for a grown-up, it's a way of doing that without leaving their job or losing their family," she says. Young writers coming to Paris follow in the footsteps of the likes of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett. And the Shakespeare and Company bookshop used by the NYU students is a living link to that legacy. This current shop in the Latin Quarter is the second incarnation. The first was run by Sylvia Beach, a US-born bookseller who published Ulysses by James Joyce in 1922 - when more or less everyone else had turned it down. This was the hang-out for writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald, before it was shut
summary: Forget any images of creative writing groups on metal chairs in draughty community centres, the business of learning to write has developed into something much more lavish.