Frankétienne (born Franck Étienne on April 12, 1936, in Ravine-Sèche, Haiti) is a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist and intellectual. He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole, and is "known as the father of Haitian letters". As a painter, he is known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters), and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010. Early life Frankétienne was born in Ravine-Sèche, a small village in Haiti. He was abandoned by his father, a rich American industrialist, at a young age and was raised by his mother in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where she was a respected entrepreneur, owning her own business to support her eight children, managing to send him, who was the eldest, to school. Selected works Au Fil du Temps, a compilation of poems Ultravocal, a novel Pèlin Tèt, a play written in Haitian Creole Dézafi, a novel about life during under the Duvalier regime, the first ever in Haitian Creole Mûr à Crever, a novel Les Affres d'un Défi, a novel Désastre (12 janvier 2010), painting Difficile émergence vers la lumière, painting References External links Frankétienne author profile on Prince Claus Foundation site Île en île: Frankétienne author file (in French), with biography, bibliography, and audio Further reading Jonassaint, Jean. "Frankétienne, Écrivain haïtien," Dérives 53/54 (1987) 1936 births Haitian Creole-language writers Haitian people of American descent Haitian people of Mulatto descent 20th-century Haitian dramatists and playwrights Haitian male dramatists and playwrights Haitian male novelists Haitian artists Haitian painters Haitian male painters Haitian male poets Living people 20th-century Haitian poets 20th-century Haitian novelists 21st-century Haitian poets 21st-century Haitian novelists 20th-century male writers 21st-century male writers