Félix Morisseau-Leroy, who made Kreyòl a literary language, dies in Miami

Félix Morisseau-Leroy died on 5 September 1998. He was born 13 March 1912. He was the first writer of real weight to put Haitian Kreyòl to poetry and to the stage, and by 1961 he had got it recognised as an official language of the country. He spent years in Ghana and Senegal helping newly independent nations build their own literatures. From 1981 he lived in Miami, where he organised the Haitian community around the language.