Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (French: [sidɔni ɡabʁijɛl kɔlɛt]; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi, which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name. Her short story collection The Tendrils of the Vine is also famous in France.
Juliet Berto (16 January 1947 – 10 January 1990), born Annie Jamet, was a French actress, director and screenwriter.
A member of the same loose group of student radicals as Anne Wiazemsky, she first appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and would go on to appear in many of Godard's subsequent films, including La Chinoise, Week End, Le Gai Savoir, and Vladimir et Rosa. She later became a muse for the French New Wave director Jacques Rivette, starring in Out 1 and Celine and Julie Go Boating.
In the 1980s, she became a screenwriter and film director. Her film Cap Canaille (1983) was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 1987, she was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. She died of breast cancer six days before her 43rd birthday.
Nicole Bacharan (born 25 January 1955) is a French historian and political scientist specializing in American society and French-American relations. She is a researcher with the National Foundation for Political Science (Sciences Po) and was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California from 2013 to 2014.
Famous for her books and her TV appearances and radio broadcasts in France and the United States, she is the author of numerous essays including several bestsellers, "Faut-il avoir peur de l’Amérique ?" (Should We Be Afraid of America?) and "Américains-Arabes, l’affrontement" (Americans-Arabs, The Confrontation). In collaboration with Dominique Simonnet, she also writes novels in the Némo series.
On September 11, 2001, live from the France 2 evening news show hosted by David Pujadas, she left a mark on French television-watchers when she said "Tonight, we are all Americans," a phrase repeated the following day in the newspaper Le Monde.
Paulette Nardal (12 October 1896 – 16 February 1985) was a French writer from Martinique, a journalist, and one of the drivers of the development of black literary consciousness. She was one of the authors involved in the creation of the Négritude genre and introduced French intellectuals to the works of members of the Harlem Renaissance through her translations.
Born into the upper-middle class on Martinique, Nardal became a teacher and went to complete her education in Paris. She was the first black person to study at the Sorbonne in 1920 and with her sisters established an influential literary salon, Le Salon de Clamart, which explored the experiences of the African diaspora. As a journalist and author, she published works that advocated a Pan-African awareness and acknowledged the similarities of challenges faced by people due to racism and sexism. Though an ardent feminist, she was not radical, encouraging women to work within the existing social structures to achieve political influence.
At the beginning of World War II, Nardal fled France but was injured when a submarine attacked her ship, causing a lifelong disability. Returning to Martinique, she established feminist organizations and newspapers encouraging educated women to channel their energies into social improvement. She sponsored home economic training and founded nursery schools for impoverished women. Because of her understanding of issues facing the populations of the Caribbean, she was hired to work as an area specialist at the United Nations. Nardal was the first black woman to hold an official post in the Division of Non-Self-Governing Territories at the UN.
When she returned to Martinique after her UN position, she worked to preserve the musical traditions of the country. She wrote a history of traditional music styles for the centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery on the island and developed a choir that celebrated the African-roots of the music of Martinique.
In the post-World War II period, Paulette Nardal was nominated as a delegate to the United Nations in 1946. She worked in the Division of Non-Self Governing Territories. She returned to Martinique in 1948, and in the 1950s and 1960s, she supported Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaign for civil rights in the United States. Paulette Nardal, who never married, died in Fort-de-France, Martinique on February 16, 1985. She was 88.
Catherine Nay (born 1 January 1943 in Tours) is a French political columnist and commentator.
Georgette Marie Philippart Travers (Paris, 7 January 1908 – Lima, 1984), French writer and poet. She was the wife of the Peruvian poet César Vallejo of international fame, considered by Mario Benedetti to be a "human paradigm", while the American poet-monk Thomas Merton points out that "the project for the translation of his poetry is of an urgent and enormous importance for the entire human race."
Katherine Pancol (born 22 October 1954) is a French journalist and novelist. Her books have been translated into some 30 languages, and sold millions of copies worldwide. In the United States, she is known as the author of The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (Penguin, 2013) and its sequel, The Slow Waltz of Turtles (Penguin, 2016), both translated by William Rodarmor.
Antoinette Corisande Élisabeth, Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre (née de Gramont; 23 April 1875 – 6 December 1954) was a French writer of the early 20th century, best known for her long-term lesbian relationship with Natalie Clifford Barney, an American writer. Élisabeth de Gramont had grown up among the highest aristocracy; when she was a child, according to Janet Flanner, "peasants on her farm... begged her not to clean her shoes before entering their houses". She looked back on this lost world of wealth and privilege with little regret, and became known as the "red duchess" for her support of socialism and feminism.She was a close friend, and sometimes critic of writer Marcel Proust, whom she first met in 1903.
Anne Golon (17 December 1921 – 14 July 2017) was a French author, better known to English-speaking readers as Sergeanne Golon. Her Angélique novels have reportedly sold 150 million copies worldwide and have inspired multiple adaptations.
Évelyne Sullerot (née Hammel; 10 October 1924 – 31 March 2017) was a French feminist. She was the author of many feminist books.