Marguerite Yourcenar (UK: , US: , French: [maʁɡ(ə)ʁit juʁsənaʁ] (listen); 8 June 1903 – 17 December 1987) was a French novelist and essayist born in Brussels, Belgium, who became a US citizen in 1947. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy seat 3.