Claire Lejeune (1926–2008)

Claire Lejeune was born in Havré, Belgium. She became a French-language poet, essayist, and playwright. An academic, enlightened humanist, she founded two magazines, Les Cahiers du symbolisme in 1962, and Réseaux in 1965. The latter became the official journal of the Interdisciplinary Center for Philosophical Studies at the University of Mons-Hainault (CIEPHUM), where she was the permanent secretary. These two journals are internationally renowned. She organized numerous interdisciplinary conferences in Paris, Geneva, Brussels, Mons, Lausanne, Neufchâtel. She also had a passion for photography, and many of her books contain photos along with prose and poetry. She received the Canada-French Community of Belgium Prize for Literature in 1984 for her lifetime of work, which is better known in Canada than in the rest of the world.