Award-Winning Author Edwidge Danticat To Present A Free Reading At Queens College

Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat will present the annual Marjorie Hecht Watson Memorial Reading at Queens College in celebration of Women's History Month.

The reading will be followed by an audience question and answer session, reception, and book signing. Queens resident Nadia Misir, a writer and alumna, will moderate the audience session. The event is free and open to the public. 

Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and the author of seventeen books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!; and Brother, I'm Dying. Marjorie Hecht Watson, who earned a BA from college in 1964, displayed a lifelong passion for literature and labor justice.

Taking place on Monday, March 10, at 7 pm at Queens College, LeFrak Concert Hall | 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11367 or on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87113128593?pwd=giuiaFGYyeYhIuEhKBB43GUWdRzoPg.1#success

Edwidge Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She received her BA in French literature from Barnard College and her MFA in creative writing from Brown University. She is the author of seventeen books, including seven books for children and young adults, a travel narrative, and a collection of essays. 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 the editor of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States, The Beacon Best of 2000, Haiti Noir, Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, a 2018 winner of the Neustadt Prize, a 2019 winner of the Saint Louis Literary Award, a 2020 United States Artist Fellow, a 2020 winner of the Vilceck Prize, and a 2023 winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her story collection, Everything Inside, was a 2020 winner of the Bocas Fiction Prize, The Story Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Prize. We're Alone, a collection of essays on influential authors, her native Haiti, and the challenges of life in America, was published by Graywolf Press in fall 2024.

Nadia Misir is a native of South Ozone Park, Queens, where she still resides. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Louis Armstrong House Museum, and Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. She earned a BA in English from SUNY Oswego, an MA in American studies from Columbia University and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Queens College, CUNY.