Salah Stétié, born in Beirut in 1929, resident in France for decades and former Ambassador of Lebanon to France, is one of the best-known Lebanese poets writing in French, and considered one of the major Francophone poets of his generation. After launching the cultural weekly L'Orient littéraire in Beirut, he developed two parallel careers, as a writer and as a distinguished diplomat, in Paris, Morocco, The Hague and elsewhere. He has published forty books, and was awarded Le Grand Prix de la Francophonie de l'Académie Française en 1995. More information is available at www.salahstetie.com.