EDWIDGE DANTICAT

EDWIDGE DANTICAT

(1969 – )

“Art is Haiti’s own ambassador—it can make its own path…Haiti’s more nuanced and complex face often comes across in its art.”

Edwidge Danticat is an award-winning Haitian-American writer known for works such as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak! and The Dew Breaker, among others.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Danticat and her brother André were raised in part by their uncle, Reverend Joseph N. Dantica, before joining their parents and two younger siblings in Brooklyn, New York.

Danticat started to hone her craft as a writer during her adolescence and went on to study French literature at Barnard College in Manhattan and creative writing at Brown University. Her MFA thesis was released in 1994 as the debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, following a girl’s journey from Haiti to the U.S. The work earned great acclaim and was eventually selected as an official book club pick by Oprah Winfrey in 1998.

Over the years, Danticat has penned a variety of fiction and non-fiction, chronicling the lives of Haitian citizens and creating vivid, unflinching portrayals of injustice. She has been the recipient of an American Book Award (1999), a National Book Critics Circle Award (2007) and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2009), among many other honors.