This program will be held in-person at the Newberry and livestreamed on Zoom. The online version of this event will be live captioned. Please register below.
Award-winning author, Edwidge Danticat (The Art of Death, Everything Inside and Brother, I’m Dying) and Rachel DeWoskin (Banshee, absolute animal) will discuss Danticat’s career as an author and editor with a focus on the craft of writing.
Writers on Writing is presented in partnership with StoryStudio Chicago. Perfect for readers and writers alike, these talks celebrate one author's work—a glimpse behind the creative curtain, a chance to ask questions, and an opportunity to celebrate the art of the written word.
Recent books by both authors will be available to purchase at the Newberry bookshop, and the authors will sign copies after the talk.
Writers on Writing is generously supported by Sue and Melvin Gray.
Speakers
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak!, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, Brother, I’m Dying, Create Dangerously, Claire of the Sea Light, The Art of Death, and Everything Inside. She is also the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, Haiti Noir, and Haiti Noir 2. She has written seven books for children and young adults: Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama's Nightingale, Untwine, My Mommy Medicine, and a travel narrative, After the Dance. Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” fellow, the winner of the 2018 Neustadt International Prize, the 2019 St. Louis Literary Award, the 2011 Bocas Nonfiction Prize and 2020 Bocas Fiction Prize, the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Literature, a 2020 United States Artists Fellow, a two-time winner of The Story Prize, and the 2023 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She teaches at Columbia University. For more information, please visit www.prhspeakers.com.
Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Two Menus: Poems (The University of Chicago Press, 2020); Banshee
(Dottir Press, 2019); Someday We Will Fly (Penguin, 2019); Blind (Penguin, 2014); Big Girl Small (FSG, 2011); Repeat After Me (The Overlook Press, 2009); and Foreign Babes in Beijing (WW Norton, 2005). She is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago, and an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies. DeWoskin’s work explores peripheries and the transnational experience, particularly questions of how human beings communicate across linguistic, cultural, national, and physical boundaries.
Cost and Registration
This program is free and open to all. Advance registration required.
Registration opens January 1.
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