Francine du Plessix Gray

Francine du Plessix Gray is an American Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and literary critic.

Early life, family background, and education

She was born on September 25, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland, where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat – the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family (French father and Russian mother) influenced her. Her father, then a sub-lieutenant in the Free French Air Force died in 1940, shot down near Gibraltar.

Her mother, Tatiana Iacovleff du Plessix, (1906–1991) had come to France as a refugee from Bolshevik Russia, and ended an engagement to Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1928, before marrying du Plessix. During her widowhood, she once again became a refugee, escaping occupied France via Lisbon to New York in 1940 or 1941 with Francine and Alexander Liberman (1912–1999). In 1942, she married Liberman, another White Russian émigré, whom she had known in Paris as a child. (During his love affair with Liberman's mother, her uncle, Alexandre Yacovleff, had recruited Tatiana to keep the boy occupied.) He was a noted artist and later a longtime editorial director of Vogue magazine and then of Condé Nast Publications. The Libermans were socially prominent in media, art and fashion circles.

For the first six months in the United States, young Francine lived with her mother's father (whom she had never met) in Rochester, New York, while her mother settled in. She grew up in New York City and was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1952. She was a scholarship student at Spence School, where she fainted in the library from malnutrition. Her mother learned that she had not been eating the meals the housekeeper prepared for her. She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years, and earned a B.A. in philosophy at Barnard College in 1952.

Personal life

On 23 April 1957, she married the painter Cleve Gray (1918–2004) and until his death they lived together in Connecticut. They had two sons.

• United Press International, New York City, reporter at night desk, 1952–54
• Réalités (French magazine), Paris, France, editorial assistant for French edition, 1954–55
• Freelance writer, 1955--
• Art in America, New York City, book editor, 1964–66
• The New Yorker, New York City, staff writer, 1968-. Robert Gottlieb was her editor.
• Distinguished visiting professor at City College of the City University of New York, spring 1975
• Visiting lecturer at Saybrook College, Yale University, 1981
• Adjunct professor, School of Fine Arts, Columbia University, 1983--
• Ferris Professor, Princeton University, 1986
• Annenberg fellow, Brown University, 1997

• American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Authors Guild
• Institute of Humanities at New York University
• International PEN

• Putnam Creative Writing Award from Barnard College, 1952
• National Catholic Book Award from Catholic Press Association, 1971, for Divine Disobedience: Profiles in Catholic Radicalism
• Front Page Award from Newswomen's Club of New York, 1972, for Hawaii: The Sugar-Coated Fortress
• LL.D.

City University of New York, 1981

Oberlin College, 1985

University of Santa Clara, 1985

St. Mary's College of California

University of Hartford

• Guggenheim fellow 1991-92
• National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, 2006, for Them: A Memoir of Parents.

• Gray, F. d. P. (1970). Divine disobedience: profiles in Catholic radicalism. New York: Knopf.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1972). Hawaii: the sugar-coated fortress. New York: Random House.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1976). Lovers and tyrants. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1981). World without end: a novel. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1985). October blood. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1987). ADAM & EVE and the CITY. Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1990). Soviet women: walking the tightrope. New York: Doubleday.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1994). Rage and fire: a life of Louise Colet, pioneer feminist, literary star, Flaubert's muse. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (1998). At home with the Marquis de Sade: a life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, F. d. P. (2001). Simone Weil. New York: Viking Press.
• Gray, F. d. P. (2005). Them: a memoir of parents. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-14-303719-4. 
• Gray, F. d. P. (2008). Madame de Staël. Atlas & Co.. ISBN 978-1-934633-17-5.

• See, Carolyn (31 October 2008). "French Letters' Open Book". Washington Post. p. C2. [She] does a marvelous job in "Madame de Staël" filling us in on the French Revolution as though it were easy to understand...I loved this book!