Julien Gracq (27 July 1910 – 22 December 2007), born Louis Poirier in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French département of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, critiques, a play, and poetry. His literary works were noted for their Surrealism.

Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his baccalauréat. He then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1930, later studying at the École libre des sciences politiques.

In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja, which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer, to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.

During the Second World War, he was a prisoner of war in Silesia with other officers of the French Army. One of the friendships he formed there was with author and literary critic Armand Hoog.

In 1950, he published in the review "Empédocle" a fierce attack on contemporary literary culture and literary prizes (La Littérature à l'estomac). When he won the Prix Goncourt for The Opposing Shore (Le Rivage des Syrtes) the following year, he remained consistent with his criticism and refused the prize.

Julien Green (September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998), was an American writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness. He wrote primarily in French and was the first non-French national to be elected to the Académie française.

Julian Hartridge Green was born to American parents in Paris, a descendant on his mother's side of a Confederate Senator, Julian Hartridge (1829–1879), who later served as a Democratic Representative from Georgia to the US Congress, and who was Julien Green's namesake. (Green was christened "Julian", the spelling was changed by his French publisher in the 1920s to "Julien".)^{[citation needed]}

The youngest of eight children born to Protestant parents. He had a very puritanical and overprotective upbringing, his mother being extremely sexually repressive (later Green would grow into an anguished and egodystonic homosexual). Green became a Roman Catholic in 1916, two years after his mother's death.The following year, still only 16, he volunteered his services as an ambulanceman in the American Field Service. When his age was discovered his enlistment was annulled. He immediately signed up with an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross, and when that six-month term of service ended in 1918, he enlisted in the French Army, in which he served as a second lieutenant of artillery until 1919. He was educated at the University of Virginia in the United States from 1919-22. His career as one of the major figures of French literature in the 20th century started soon after his return from the United States, beginning with Mont-Cinère (1926) which was well-received by Georges Bernanos.