After completing medical school in Paris, he traveled throughout Europe and lived for a few years in Cuba.
He followed up with Les Arbres musiciens (1957), L'Espace d'un cillement (1959), and Romancero aux étoiles (1960).
More than just an intellectual, Jacques Stephen Alexis was also an active participant in the social and political debates of his time.
He had a sum of exactly $13,000 on him and he was taken to Port-au-Prince by a Haitian Coast Guard boat and later incarcerated in Fort Dimanche.
He died in Casernes Dessalines, Haiti, survived by his wife Andree Roumer, niece of eminent Haitian poet Émile Roumer, his daughter Florence Alexis and his son, Jean-Jacques Stephen Alexis (AKA: JanJak II).