AUTHOR & EDITOR
Born in Jérémie, Haiti, on September 21, 1920 under the pen name of Jacques Lemoir, he published many poems in the Haitian literary magazine Optique (1954-1956).
From 1961 to 1986, he lived in New York with his wife Marcelle Pierre-Louis. In 1964, he was deprived of his Haitian citizenship by the Duvalier dictatorship. He was the first author to win the Casa de las Américas Prize in French (1979). He went to Cuba as a member of the Casa literary jury in 1981. At the end of the Duvalier dynasty in 1986, Paul and Marcelle went back to Haiti after 25 years in exile.
Former secretary-general of the Association of Haitian Writers Abroad (1979-1986), he is the author of several poetry books in French and in Creole, the language of Haitian people; some were translated in Spanish, English and Italian. Camourade (Camarade/Comrade and Amour/Love), translated from French into English by Rosemary Manno, was published by Curbstone Press in 1988, with an introduction by Jack Hirschman.
Paul’s second exile started with the overthrow of Jean Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti in 1991, and the murder of his own brother Guy F. Laraque, a poet and a literary critic, the same year in Port-au-Prince. He was the main speaker at the Festival of Caribbean Culture in Santiago de Cuba, in 1994.
A collection of his poems in French, Oeuvres Incompl&ebrave;tes (Incomplete Works), dedicated to Marcelle, was published by CIDIHCA, Canada, 1999, after her death. His last book, LESPWA (Hope), a collection of his poems in Creole, was published by Les Editions Mémoiré in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 2001.
Paul’s and Marcelle’s children and grandchildren are living in the United States and in Canada.
Works to be published: Haiti, la lutte et l’espoir (Haiti, the fight and the hope), in collaboration with his brother Franck Laraque, by CIDIHCA; Open Gate, a bilingual anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry, Jack Hirschman and Paul Laraque editors, by Curbstone Press; and Liberty Drum, a new selection of Laraque’s French and Creole poems translated into English, by City Lights in California.
Works by Paul Laraque from Curbstone Press:
