Francine du Plessix Gray

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Francine du Plessix Gray (born September 25, 1930 in Warsaw ; died January 13, 2019 in New York City ) was a French-American journalist and writer.

Life

Francine du Plessix was the daughter of the Russian émigré Tatjana Alexejewna Jakowlewa (1906–1991) and the French diplomat Viscount Bertrand du Plessix (1902–1940). She grew up in a middle-class family in Paris. Her father died as a soldier in the French Armée de l'air near Gibraltar during World War II .

Her mother married the Russian emigrant and journalist Alexander Liberman (1912–1999); In 1943 they managed to escape from Europe to the USA. Plessix attended Spence School in New York City and received a BA from Bryn Mawr College in 1952 . That year she was naturalized in the USA.

Plessix worked for two years as a reporter for United Press International in New York City and then until 1955 as a publishing assistant for the French illustrated magazine Réalités . Afterwards she worked as a freelance journalist. In 1957 she married the painter Cleve Gray (1918-2004), they had two sons.

From 1964 to 1966, Plessix Gray worked as an editor for Art in America in New York City. In 1968 she became an editor at The New Yorker . In 1975 Plessix Gray was visiting professor at the City College of New York , and in 1981 at Yale University . In 1983 she took on a teaching position at the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University and then worked at Princeton University and Brown University . She was a member of the PEN in 1991 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2005 the National Book Critics Circle Award for her autobiography . In 1992 she was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 2004 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works (selection)

  • Divine disobedience: profiles in Catholic radicalism . Knopf, New York 1970.
  • Hawaii: the sugar-coated fortress . Random House, New York 1972.
  • Lovers and tyrants . Simon & Schuster, New York 1976.
    • Lovers and tyrants: novel . Translation Ludwig Graf Schönfeldt. Propylaea, Berlin 1979, ISBN 978-3-549-05573-1 .
  • World without end: a novel . Simon & Schuster, New York 1981.
  • October blood . Simon & Schuster, New York 1985.
  • ADAM & EVE and the CITY . Simon & Schuster, 1987.
  • Soviet women: walking the tightrope . Doubleday, New York 1990.
    • A tightrope act: Women in the Soviet Union - Encounters from the Period of Perestroika . Translation Jürgen Benz. Droemer, Munich 1992, ISBN 978-3-426-77012-2 .
  • Rage and fire: a life of Louise Colet , pioneer feminist, literary star, Flaubert's muse . Simon & Schuster, New York 1994.
    • What we dream when we love: The life of Louise Colet - writer, feminist, mistress of Flaubert. Translation by Klaus Fritz and Manuela Olsson. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3463402567 .
  • At home with the Marquis de Sade : a life . Simon & Schuster, New York, NY 1998.
  • Simone Weil . Viking Press, New York 2001.
  • Them: a memoir of parents . Autobiography. Penguin Press, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-14-303719-4 .
  • Madame de Staël . Atlas & Co., 2008 ISBN 978-1-934633-17-5 .
  • Mayakovsky's last love . Translation Matthias Wolf. Berenberg, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-937834-27-6 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: Francine du Plessix Gray. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 1, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Plessix Gray, Francine you
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plessix, Francine you
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 2019
Place of death New York City