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St. John's News: Renowned Author Edwidge Danticat Shares Her Memories and Talent with the University Community ..... Academic Lecture Series featuring renown author Edwidge Danticat.

Critically acclaimed writer Edwidge Danticat wowed the audience during her appearance at the Queens campus on November 2, as part of the Fall 2006 Academic Lecture Series.

With her softly accented voice which contains traces of the French and Creole she speaks, the author read from her book The Dew Breaker and discussed writing, literature, culture and her beloved Haiti with the many students, administrators and alumni who showed up at the Little Theater in Carnesecca Arena. The prolific Danticat read a story titled ?The Funeral Singer? from her book which is a fictional series of related stories revolving around a Haitian immigrant to the United States who has a past as a prison guard and torturer. Danticat immigrated to Brooklyn at age 12, following her parents who had left her in the care of relatives in Haiti after they came to the U.S. to find work. It was in her native homeland that the budding writer was exposed to the storytelling traditions which later would become so deeply woven into her fiction. ?Haiti has a very rich literary tradition,? Danticat said. ?It?s a thing that gives one pause because the literacy rate is very low, but we have a lot of writers. You wonder how many more there might be if there was a higher rate of literacy.?

A holder of a Bachelor of Arts in French from Barnard College and a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University, Danticat?s thesis became her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, about four generations of Haitian women who must overcome their poverty and powerlessness. The following year, she published Krik? Krak! a collection of short stories about Haiti and Haitian-Americans longing for political freedoms and democracy which was chosen as a finalist for the National Book Award in 1995. Breath, Eyes, Memory was an Oprah Book Club selection in 1998 which brought Danticat?s work to the attention of many more readers. Her novel, The Farming of Bones, was an American Book Award winner.

Her short stories have appeared in countless periodicals, and she has won awards from both Seventeen and Essence magazines, as well as a James Michener Fellowship. She has also taught creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami and has worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haiti in addition to writing two young adult novels and a travel memoir, After the Dance.

During the Q & A after her reading at St. John?s, Danticat was asked whether she derives her characters and stories from people she has known. She responded that there is some element of those she has met and stories she has heard injected into her writing. ?I enjoy this mixing of reality with the fictional world because for me it makes the fictional world seem a lot more real,? she said. ?Writers are like sponges. We take inspiration from wherever we can get it.? She told those present that she hopes her writing gives readers a sense of Haiti and its people. ?I think reading a good book is like going into somebody?s life,? she remarked. ?Literature is like a window beyond culture. It?s a window into the human experience.?

Danticat?s appearance was co-sponsored by the Department of Student Life, Office of the Provost, Discover New York and Core Curriculum, Student Government, Inc. and the President's Multicultural Advisory Committee.