Jocelyne François
| Jocelyne François | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1933 Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Lesbian fiction, poetry |
| Notable works | Joue-nous "España" |
| Notable awards | Prix Femina |
Jocelyne François (born 1933 in Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle) is a French writer. She is the author of five lesbian novels, and winner of the Prix Femina.
François was born in Nancy as the eldest of three children; early on in her schooling she gave evidence of great memory and a gift for writing. After six years in Catholic boarding school, where she met her future partner Marie-Claire Pichaud, she studied philosophy in Nancy and married, more or less for convenience: the two oldest children of this marriage were raised by their father, the youngest by François and her partner. Her partner is a painter, whose artistic sensitivities greatly influenced François, who embarked on a career as a writer. A turning moment was meeting poet René Char in the 1960s. François and Pichaud lived in Saumane-de-Vaucluse for twenty-five years before moving to Paris in 1985, amid health problems.
Her first novel was Les Bonheurs, published in 1970 with Laffont and republished in 1982 with Mercure de France, which publishes all her work. She received the Prix Femina for Joue-nous "España" in 1980 and the Prix Erckmann-Chatrian for Portrait d’homme au crépuscule in 2001.
Besides novels, she also writes poetry and experimental prose. She began publishing her diaries; in 2009, the fourth volume (covering 2001-2007) was released.
In the French canon, François's work and success is said to testify to the viability and strength of gay and lesbian literature, and adds to the corpus of a feminist, radical lesbian literature begun by Violette Leduc, Monique Wittig, and Christiane Rochefort. Her winning the Prix Femina helped signal that literature's "institutional consecration." Alongside Jeanne Galzy and Mireille Best, she is credited with creating "images of lesbians [which] challenge both the dominant heterosexist ideology and the limiting idea of the lesbian novel as manifesto in order to offer new visions of sexual identity." Love, or the "ardeur [de l'amour] qui structure les jours," is an overarching theme in all her work, poetry or prose.
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