Maryse Conde

Maryse Condé (Philcox) was born in Pointe-à-Pitre in 1937. She was the eldest in a family of eight children. Her parents came from Guadeloupe and she left home when she was sixteen to continue her studies in France. In 1959 she married Mamadou Condé, an actor from Africa. She then lived in the Ivory Coast and taught for a year in Bingerville. Later, she set out on her own for Ghana. In the 1970's she left Africa to settle in France. In 1982, she married Richard Philcox, the English translator of the majority of her novels. In 1985 she obtained a Fulbright scholarship to teach in the United States and stayed in Los Angeles for a year. In 1986 she returned to Guadeloupe. She teaches at Columbia University in New York and spend her time between New York and Guadeloupe.