User:Coueche

Denis Baldwin-Beneich

Born Denis David Beneich in Rabat, Morocco, on January 29, 1953, the son of a French bank clerk and a French civil servant.

After earning his BA in philosophy at La Sorbonne-Paris IV, he studied under Sylvain Zac and in 1976 earned his masters degree in philosophy from Universite de Paris X. His thesis was titled "Spinoza et le problème de l’erreur." Working with doctoral adviser Jeanne Delhomme, he earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1980. The title of his thesis was "Paul Valéry: Les cahiers. Philosophie, poésie et poétique.

Early career
Baldwin-Beneich started out teaching philosophy in Normandy at the Collège de l’Andelle (1977-1978). He went on to teach philosophy at the École Française d’Attachés de Presse, in Paris (1978-1980) and then at the Lycée Français de New York (1980-1981). While there, he also taught French at the Alliance Française de New York. In 1987 he returned to Paris.

Publishing
While writing for the daily Libération in the early 1980s, Baldwin-Beneich also reviewed Anglo-American literature for the publishing house Editions du Seuil. HE was a contributor to the 1988 edition of Dictionnaire des Philosophes (ed. Denis Huisman, Presses Universitaires de France).

In 1988, he was responsible for the publication in French of James Mellon's Bullwhip days (Les Jours du fouet, Ed. du Seuil), which was an oral history of the last surviving former slaves, whose testimonies had been recorded as part of the WPA. In 1991 he created the imprint Nouvelles Angleterres at Éditions Balland, which he edited until 2003 when the publishing house declared bankruptcy. Nouvelles Angleterres was dedicated to publishing quality Engligh and American fiction (and some nonfiction) in French. The imprint contains more than 40 titles by authors including Stephen Dixon, Susan Orlean, Lisa Zeidner, Trey Ellis, Albert French, Nicholson Baker, John Clellon Holmes, Teresa Kennedy, David Baddiel, Edward St. Aubyn, Tibor Fisher, Rupert Everett, and Dave Eggers.

In 2003, he was hired by Éditions Calmann-Lévy to scout and publish more Anglo-American writing, and published 10 titles by writers including David Baddiel, Mary Roach, William Nicholson, Dan Pope, and Sharon Waxman.

Writing
Baldwin-Beneich is the author of eight novels: Softwar (1984, Éditions Robert Laffont); the trilogy Fausse Donne (1989), L’Imposteur (1990), and L’Anniversaire de Liz Lapin (1991, all Éditions Balland); Le Plus Grand Rabbin du Monde (2002, Éditions Denoël); Les Corbeaux de Providence (2005, Éditions Denoël); and Le Sérieux des Nuages (2010, Éditions Actes-Sud). He is also the co-author of the nonfiction book Métastases : vérités sur le cancer (1998, Éditions Hachette), which he wrote with Laurent Schwartz, MD.