Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat is married to Fedo Boyer. The couple has two daughters: Mira and Leila.

Edwidge Danticat was born on January 19, 1969 in in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to André, and his wife, Rose. When she was a child, her parents immigrated to New York, initially her father, followed by her mother two years later.

As a result, she and her younger brother, André, were raised by her aunt and uncle. Although, she received her formal education in French, she used to speak Kreyòl language at home and began writing at the age of nine.

At the age of 12, she moved to United States to live with her parents in a heavily Haitian American neighborhood. As an immigrant teenager, she was unable to adjust in her new surroundings and thus turned to literature for comfort.

At the age of 14, she published her first writing in English titled ‘A Haitian-American Christmas: Cremace and Creole Theatre’ followed by ‘A New World Full of Strangers’ in a citywide magazine written by teenagers.

She graduated from Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, and was then enrolled at the Barnard College in New York City. She completed her BA in French literature and went on to obtain a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Brown University in 1993.

In 1994, Edwidge Danticat published her first novel ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ based on her post graduate thesis entitled "My turn in the fire – an abridged novel".

Her short stories have been published in over 25 periodicals and also anthologized several times. Her works have been translated into numerous other languages, including Japanese, French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Edwidge Danticat has been a teacher of creative writing at the New York University and the University of Miami. She has also worked on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haïti.

Some of her published works include: ‘The Farming of Bones’ (1998), ‘Behind the Mountains’ (2002), ‘Brother, I'm Dying’ (2007), ‘Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work’ (2010), and ‘Claire of the Sea Light’ (2013).

She is also the author of popular short stories such as, ‘The Book of the Dead’ (1999), ‘Ghosts’ (2009), and the most recent one titled ‘Quality Control’ (2015).

One of her most notable works is her first novel ‘Breath, Eyes, Memory’ published in 1994. The novel is written in a first person narrative format and deals with questions of racial, linguistic and gender identity in interconnected ways.

Another one of Edwidge Danticat’s acclaimed works is the 2004 book ‘The Dew Breaker’ which can be read either as a novel or collection of short stories. It is a series of interconnected stories about a Haitian immigrant who had tortured and murdered dissidents during the repressive rule of Franƈois Duvalier.