About us
Board of Directors
Hilary Hodge
President
Hilary’s lifelong love of books, education, and service has shaped her 25 years of work in publishing, adult education, and nonprofit leadership in the United States and Europe.
She has worked as a writer and editor for Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and National Geographic, and her writing has appeared in Slate, Hemispheres, Literary Mama, and Waging Nonviolence.
She served as Associate Vice Chancellor of Adult Education for the City Colleges of Chicago for many years before moving to France in 2017. In 2023, she launched the Angers Literary Festival to bring English-language literary programming to her new hometown, and, in 2026, she founded the association Grand West Lit Events to expand the programs across Western Fance.
She also serves on the communications team of Braver Angels, an organization working to depolarize politics in the United States and previously served on both the Chicago and national boards of 826, a nonprofit devoted to helping students aged 6 to 18 to improve their writing skills.
She lives in Angers with her husband and son.
Antoine Saunier
Treasurer
Antoine is a Vice President of Strategic Analytics and Insights at NielsenIQ, the world's leading market research and data analytics firm. He is a leader in innovation, product development, and launch strategy, and manages a $30 million client portfolio.
He has worked with NielsenIQ for the past 17 years. Before that, he received his master's in Business from Sciences Po. He has served as a guest lecturer at the Wits Global Business School in Johannesburg, the Toulouse Business School, and L'Institut d'Administration des Entreprises de Grenoble. As an undergraduate, he studied comparative politics with a focus on Syria and spent a year working for the French Embassy in Damascus.
He is an avid runner and lives in Angers with his family.
Ginette Law
Secretary
Ginette is a Canadian of mixed heritage who lives in Angers. She has spent over two decades in the digital realm managing projects for both private and public entities, including INSEAD, the Oxford Internet Institute, TELUS, Huawei, Radio-Canada, Radio Canada International, Microsoft, Esplanade Consulting, and Artisan Wines.
A dedicated volunteer, Ginette has contributed her time to a wide range of organizations. Over the years, she has served on the board of directors for Grandir sans frontières / Growing Without Borders, been part of the organizing committee for the Data Visualisation Meetup Groups in both Montreal and Vancouver, and spent three years co-leading Children's Hour at the English-language Library in Angers. She has also served as a volunteer and moderator for the library and the Angers Literary Festival.
She holds a MSc in Social Sciences of the Internet from the University of Oxford. She is currently working on a speculative fiction novel about the creative class in an automated world.
Advisory board
Theresa Conroy
Michelle Crowell
Rennes
Nantes
An award-winning journalist for 26 years, Theresa has covered criminal courts, presidential indiscretions, politics, and a fugitive murderer who led her on a chase through the streets of a sleepy French town. Her passion was tabloid crime reporting at the Philadelphia Daily News. She also worked as a full-time stringer at the Philadelphia Inquirer, as an assistant editor at Philadelphia Magazine, and as president of the Pen & Pencil Club, the oldest press club in America.
After leaving journalism in 2007, she became a Certified Yoga Therapist and opened her own studio. She specialized in working with Parkinson’s Disease and other neurological disorders.
Her love of France, which was reignited during coverage of that fugitive murderer, inspired her 2022 move to Brittany. Twenty-five years after putting down her notebook, Theresa returned to writing. She and her husband, Don Russell, an award-winning beer columnist and newspaper reporter, chronicle their life in France on their Substack blog, YoFrance.
Originally from Missouri, Michelle is a Franco-American writer based in Nantes. Currently pursuing a PhD in American Literature, Michelle holds a Master's in General and Comparative Literature from the Sorbonne and is a professeure agrégée in English.
Her writing explores identity, sexuality, feminism, sisterhood, and the deconstruction of fundamentalist religion. Her stories have been featured in Anti-Heroin Chic, Discretionary Love, and New2theScene. She leads a monthly writers' group in Nantes, and is seeking representation for her quirky coming-of-age novel.
Anne Glotin
Amy Plum
Angers
Paris
Anne Glotin is the owner of the café-bookshop Le Mot de la Faim, in the town of Montreuil-Juigné just outside Angers. The bookstore has over 8,000 titles, games, and stationery, a wide range of used books, and a tea room that showcases paintings, photographs, and drawings throughout the year.
The cafe serves locally sourced, organic food and cakes and is a venue for cultural events, author talks, storytime, writing workshops, and more.
Amy is the author of Die For Me, an international bestselling young adult series set in Paris, which is comprised of three novels and a compendium. Her second series is a duology. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages.
After being raised in Birmingham, Alabama, in a rather restrictive environment, Amy escaped to Chicago to an even more restrictive environment at a university that expelled people for dancing. (And where she was called to the dean’s office for “wearing too much black”.) After all of that restrictiveness, she was forced to run far, far away, specifically to Paris, France, where she only wore black and danced all she wanted.
After signing with HarperCollins for the Die For Me series, Amy left her job as an English professor at Tours University to write full-time. She now lives in Paris with her two children.