Writer/Author; Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in Columbia University’s Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
Edwidge Danticat
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Edwidge Danticat immigrated to Brooklyn, New York at the age of twelve. She started writing when she was nine years old, and is now the author of 18 books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; The Dew Breaker; Brother, I’m Dying; Everything Inside; and We’re Alone: Essays, a National Book Critics Circle nonfiction finalist. Ms. Danticat currently serves as the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in Columbia University’s Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Her recent honors include the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and the 2026 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
“We must somehow become each other’s harbors to protect one another from the wolves. We must become each other’s better angels or we are all doomed.”