Patti M. Marxsen is an essayist, biographer, independent scholar, and translator (FR>EN) whose writings have been published in the USA, Europe, and the Caribbean. She is the author of three biographical studies, two essay collections, a collection of short fiction, and numerous articles and reviews related to visual art and Haitian literature.
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As publications manager for the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA) Marxsen developed multi-author books on global ethics and education aimed at college students. She began to write independently after moving to Switzerland, where she completed her biography of Albert Schweitzer’s wife, Helene Schweitzer: A Life of Her Own (Syracuse University Press, 2015). Her stint as Guest Editor-in-Chief of the 2017 edition of Offshoots 14—Writing from Geneva capped a decade-long involvement with the Geneva Writers Group before returning to the USA in 2021. It was there, on the coast of Maine, where her professional writing life began in 1989 when she covered the arts for The Camden Herald.
Marxsen’s books reflect her long-standing interest in the Francophone world, which has encompassed teaching French, extensive travel, and a decade-long association with Haiti’s Hôpital Albert Schweitzer (1997–2007). She has served on the board of the U.S.-based Haitian Studies Association (HSA) and presented papers at conferences of the Caribbean Studies Association & HSA on key figures of modern Haitian literature including Edwidge Danticat, Yanick Lahens, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, and Jacques Roumain. Roumain’s dramatic life resulted in her second biography Jacques Roumain: A Life of Resistance, a book published by Caribbean Studies Press and honored with the 2019 Haitian Studies Association Book Prize.
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Like her studies of Helene Schweitzer and Jacques Roumain, Marxsen’s most recent focus involves a mid-twentieth-century vision of Africa through the life of a complex, European/Europeonized subject: Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen), author of one of the most famous memoirs of the 20th century: Out of Africa. Blixen's life story, her evolution as a writer, and her contested legacy form the multi-faceted analysis of Marxsen's Karen Blixen's Search for Self: The Making of 'Out of Africa,' forthcoming from LSU Press, Spring 2026.
*​Photo of Karen Blixen on safari in Colonial Kenya ca. 1920
photo courtesy of the Karen Blixen Museum, Denmark
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