Equinox Island - Paperback

Fanchette, Jean: - Born on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, Jean Fanchette (1932-92) was a psychiatrist, writer, and editor who spent his adult life in Paris. While still in medical school he won several French national poetry prizes. In 1959, with the support of Anaïs Nin, he founded the French-English bilingual review Two Cities, which featured the work of many future notables, including Michel Deguy, Lawrence Durrell, and Octavio Paz. Under the Two Cities imprint, Fanchette published Minutes to Go (1959), the first "cut-up" experiments of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, and Gregory Corso. In his region of origin Fanchette is highly celebrated: every two years since 1992, the Jean Fanchette Prize has been awarded to a writer from the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, Réunion, Madagascar, the Comoros, and Seychelles.