One Maryland One Book Kick Off Event with Myriam J. A. Chancy

Maryland Humanities invites you to a virtual event with Myriam J. A. Chancy, author of What Storm, What Thunder, in a transdisciplinary conversation with a panel of Haitian writers, scholars, and thinkers, who will set the stage for how readers can consider Haiti’s past, present, and future as they read along through the fall. Audience Q&A will follow.

This FREE event will be on Thursday, September 5 at 6 PM Eastern. Click here to register. Registration is to get the Zoom link. The event will be recorded.

This event will be held on Zoom in English, with Haitian Creole audio interpretation.

Panel:Dr. Mamyrah Prosper (Moderator) from the University of California, Irvine; Dr. Sabine Lamour from French and Francophone Studies Brown University/Universite d'Etat D'Haiti; Dr. Ermion Pierre from the Essentia Center for Integrative Health; and Dr. Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus

This event is presented in partnership with the Haitian Studies Association and University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies.

"At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster--Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonň, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and-at the same time-an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit"-- Provided by publisher.

About the author:

Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author most recently of the novel Village Weavers (Tin House). Her previous novel, What Storm, What Thunder, was named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, and The Globe and Mail ; shortlisted for the CALIBA Golden Poppy Award and Aspen Words Literary Prize; longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize; and awarded an ABA from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her past novels include The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award in Fiction; The Scorpion’s Claw; and Spirit of Haiti, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize’s Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. She is also the author of several academic monographs, including Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters and Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone Magazine, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College in California.