Frankétienne

'''Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d'Argent (; 12 April 1936 – 20 February 2025), known by his pen name Frankétienne''', was a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, and painter. He is recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights in both French and Haitian Creole, and is "known as the father of Haitian letters". He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters), and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.

==Life and career== Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d'Argent was born in Ravine-Sèche, a small village in Haiti. His mother, Annette Étienne, a black Haitian, was 16 when she gave birth to him, and his father, Benjamin Lyles, a wealthy white American, was 63. His father then abandoned the family. Frankétienne later said that he was given his first names by his mother and grandmother to protect him from sorcery. He 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, her eldest, to school. He grew up to work as a teacher in Bel Air. At the age of 5, he was enrolled in Petit Séminaire Collège Saint-Martial, where he learned French. Although he excelled in mathematics and physics, he failed the entrance exam for medicine, so he enrolled in an American mechanical school.