Deirdre Kelly has had a whirlwind 24 years with the Globe and Mail. Hired fresh out of her Master’s degree in English, she started out as the dance critic and was soon writing up to nine articles a week on pop culture, music, and art. “You name the ’80s band, I covered them, and then some,” Kelly said. After 2000, Kelly was re-assigned as the Globe’s senior fashion reporter, travelling to Paris, New York, and Milan. Now, she works as a features writer based in Toronto.

Before all that, Kelly was a U of T student for both her undergrad and graduate studies, living at University College (but really living in Robarts), working out at Hart House, and writing for The Varsity. This month marks the release of her new book, Paris Times Eight, which chronicles her trips to Paris over the years—first as a 19-year-old just about to start university, then as a student, a reporter, and eventually as a mother. In a recent interview, Kelly chatted with The Varsity about her (sometimes rocky) time as a journalist, her adventures in Paris, and how U of T shaped it all.

The Varsity: You’ve written for Vogue, Interview, and … Playgirl?

Deirdre Kelly: Oh, yeah. I was so desperate to crack into the New York market I would write for anyone. I did an interview with David Cronenberg for Playgirl.

TV: Tell us about your experience at U of T.

DK: I came into U of T when I was 19. Now I have to confess my age—it was September of 1979. I chose UC for its drama program, which is ironic, because I never took a single drama course at U of T.

I knew I wanted to be a writer from a very young age. I just wanted to write, and student newspapers were suddenly available to me. I was on the UC field hockey team, and other than that I practically lived at Hart House, [running] 36 miles a week.

TV: You went to Paris for the first time just before university?

DK: That first trip to Paris planted the seed for the desire for something completely foreign to anything I knew growing up. Paris had very instantly and irrevocably planted in me a desire to somehow be like that city, which is to say cosmopolitan and sophisticated and intellectual, so I wanted to be very versed in the humanities.

TV: And the next time you went, you thought you would live there.

DK: I had been accepted to my M.A. program in English, and that was the fallback plan. Really the more immediate plan was to live in Paris forever and be a writer. I had actually applied to an English language publication there and I was quite determined to stay.

My mother in a way convinced me to come back [to Toronto] just to do the Master’s, and as chance would have it I got the Globe and Mail job right then, so that’s what made Paris the dream. Toronto became the day-to-day reality.

Maybe it was that Paris was a city where art wasn’t a frill, where art was so valued, and so integral to the society, that on every street corner practically was a reminder of an artistic or creative genius who had walked there before. There was such a celebration of that, which was always lacking for me in Toronto, and lacking especially in my home life where art wasn’t overly valued.

TV: Was the intellectual intensity at U of T like your experience in Paris?

DK: The book is a bit of a love letter to the city, [but] love isn’t always rosy—it’s sometimes a very forbidding desire, because the city doesn’t easily let me in. Hence it becomes the eternal quest, because I never really can attain the ideal that is Paris, whereas the community that I found in those early days at U of T was something where you could have access.

Paris Times Eight (Douglas & McIntyre) is out now.