THE AUTHORS
Patti M. Marxsen is an American writer whose work often focuses on Francophone literature and culture. Her articles, stories, and reviews related to Haiti have appeared in The Caribbean Writer, The French Review, Women’s Review of Books, and the Journal of Haitian Studies. In 2008, Tales from the Heart of Haiti was short-listed for the Paris Prize for Fiction. She lives in Switzerland where she has devoted the past several years to her biography of Jacques Roumain published by Caribbean Studies Press in 2019.
Dr. Pressley-Sanon is assistant professor of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. Her work focuses on the intersections of memory, history, and cultural production in Africa and the African diaspora. She has a Ph.D. from the Department of African Languages and Literature with a minor in Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also holds an M.A. in Liberal Studies and Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and a B.A. from Hamilton College. She is also a visual artist who draws inspiration from her research.
Mahadevi Ramakrishnan is Senior Lecturer in French at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, and also teaches about the French Caribbean. She received her D.A. in Foreign Languages from Syracuse University with an additional concentration in International Relations. Most recently, her research has centered on Martinique, and she has directed Beyond Colgate Programs for Colgate students to study the rich culture and history of the French Caribbean island.
Marie-Jose Alcide Saint-Lot, born in Haiti has been living in the United States since 1968. She holds a doctorate in Theater (Dramatic Theory and Criticism), a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts (Acting) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Theater Arts and Oral Communication. She taught Public Speaking and Oral Interpretation at City College of New York for several years, Presently she teaches Public Communication in Florida, Jamaica and the Bahamas.
Dr, Saint-Lot did substantial research and field work on Afro Haitian Culture in Africa and Haiti. Her findings constitute the backbone of her book: Vodou, A Sacred Theatre.
Stephanie Berard , Assistant Professor of French at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Her research concentrates on literature and culture of the French Caribbean in the context of Postcolonial and Theater Studies. She is a specialist in Francophone and Creolophone Caribbean theater, as well as contemporary African dramatists of the disapora.
Rosa Elena Carrasquillo is Associate Professor of Caribbean, Latin American and Latino History at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA. She has published on Afro-Puerto-Rican history and popular culture. An engaged scholar, she is also a member of the Latino Education Institute Advisory Board.
Marie Léticée is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at the University of Central Florida. She received degrees from the University of Paris and the University of South Florida in Tampa before coming to UCF and has published in journals such as Callaloo.
Dr. R. Scott Smith is Professor of Psychology at Utica College in New York. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duke University and has significant clinical experience. His research interests primarily focus on elements of social ecology and the psychology of cultural adaptation that affect the processes of emigration and resettlement.
Judy Raymond has been a journalist in Trinidad and Tobago for over 25 years and was editor-in-chief of the country’s oldest newspaper, the “Trinidad and Tobago Guardian,” as well as several other publications. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Oxford and a M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University. She is the author of two previous books, both biographies of Trinidad and Tobago artists.
Jan Dominique is an author, educator and journalist born in Haiti, now living in Montreal. She first went to Quebec as a student, and returned to Haiti in 1979, where she taught at high schools and at the Université d’Etat d’Haiti. She also worked as a broadcaster at Radio Haiti, owned by her father, Jean Dominique, who was assassinated for political reasons in 2000.
Political pressure and threats on her life forced her to leave Haiti in 2003. In addition to “Memoir d’une amnésique,” she is the author of the novels “Evasion,” “Inventer la Célestine,” and “La Célestine,” the last published in 2007.
Dr. Georges Anglade is a geographer with a passion for literature who set himself the task of modernizing the oral tradition of the Haitian lodyans and of universalizing its expressions. He received his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Strasbourg and is emeritus professor and chair of the Department of Geography of the Universite du Quebec in Montreal.
Dr. Tatiana K. Wah is assistant professor of urban development and policy at the Robert J. Milano School of Management and Urban Policy of the New School University in New York. She received her master’s degree and doctorate in urban and regional planning and policy development from Rutgers University and her undergraduate degree from Brown University.
Her research and consulting work have focused on two areas: the economic development of small countries, particularly those in the Caribbean; and the global management of expatriate communities.
Molly Crumpton Winter, Professor of English at California State University, Stanislaus, Dr. Winter teaches American literature, specializing in multiethnic literature. She is a Fulbright Scholar and the author of American Narratives: Multiethnic Writing in the Age of Realism, published in 2007. Her work has appeared in A Companion to the American Short Story: Western American Literature and in Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1919, among other publications.
Laxmi G. Tewari, trained as ethnomusicologist at Wesleyan University, Dr. Tewari has studied Indian classical vocal music in the guru-shishya-parampara (teacher-disciple-relationship) tradition; Turkish music and Ghanaian drumming. He has conducted numerous field researches to India, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, and Fiji. He enjoys sharing his first-hand experiences with the musics of South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and African in the ‘teaching what you know best’ theory.
Erin Taylor is a Lecturer in Anthropology at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her academic interests include urban anthropology; social stratification and classifications; poverty, production and consumption; and material culture. Her doctoral dissertation “Abajo el Puente: Place and the Politics of Progress in Santo Domingo” explores the strategies and practices that residents of an inner-city squatter settlement without legal land title engage in as they attempt to achieve forms of progress on their own and other people’s terms.
Néstor Rodríguez is Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Toronto, Canada. He received a B.A. in Comparative Literature frin University of Puerto Rico in 1994 and a Ph.D. in Spanish from Emory University, 2003.
A critical figure in Haitian literature, Jacques Roumain was born in 1907 to a venerable Haitian family. Educated in Port-au-Prince and later in Europe, he then returned to a Haiti under American Occupation. Roumain joined other young intellectuals in a resistance movement against the occupation, which was instrumental in ending it.
Roumain and his compatriots were also avid promoters of Haitian culture and literature, and he emerged as a leader of the Indigenous Movement, which expressed the idea that rural Haitian peasant life should be considered the real basis of Haitian culture. Roumain thus incorporated these realities into his writing.
Valentina Peguero, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Dr. Peguero received her B.A. in Education from the Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra, Santiago, Dominican Republic and a M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, New York City. Specializing in modern Caribbean and Latin American history and culture, Dr. Peguero’s particular interests are issues of ethnicity and race, Caribbean women’s history, and Dominican political and military history.
Guerda Nicolas joined the University of Miami in August, 2008. She was an associate professor at Boston College in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology prior to joining the EPS faculty. She obtained her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Boston University in 1997. She completed her pre-doctoral training at Columbia University Medical Center and her postdoctoral training the New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University, Department of Child Psychiatry. As a multicultural (Haitian American) and multilingual psychologist (Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole), her research is reflective of her background and interests. Her current research centers on partnering with ethnically diverse and immigrant communities to develop culturally effective mental health interventions to combat depression, address issues of racism and racial discrimination stress, enhance the racial and ethnic identity development of children and adolescents, and promote individual, family, and community well-being. Nicolas is also president of the Haitian Studies Association.
Co-Director, Haiti Reborn/ Quixote Center, Hyattsville, MD
Melinda Miles has been actively involved in Haitian issues since 1993. She coordinates the Haiti Reborn program of the Quixote Center, which supports community-based Haitian initiatives in the U.S. and advocates for justice in U.S. policy toward Haiti and its people. Miles has coordinated over a dozen delegations to Haiti and was a press spokesperson for the International Coalition of Independent Observers for Haiti’s elections held in 2000. She authored a report on that process, “Elections 2000:Monitoring Participatory Democracy in Haiti.”
Elmide Meleance, a teacher with the Montgomery County (MD) public schools, Ms. Meleance is also pursuing her doctorate in education at American University in Washington, DC. She received her master’s in French studies and literature at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Her research interests include linguistics, second-language acquisition, and translation, and she has published on these subjects as well.
Lorraine Lopez is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University. Her first Book, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories, won the inaugural Miguel Marmol prize for fiction. Her second book, Call Me Henri, was awarded the Paterson Prize in 2007. Her novel, The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters, was released in the 2008, and her fourth book, Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction in 2010.. She also has written The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, a collection of personal essays on Latino cultural identity and writing. Her recent novel, The Realm of Hungry Spirits, was released in 2011.
Stephanie Keith bases combines both research and photography in journalistic style projects. Her primary focus is religion and immigration. Her photos have been published in the New York Times, Time Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Saudi Aramco World as well as exhibited in New York City and internationally. www.stephaniekeith.com
Mark Boren is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. His publications include “Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject,” as well as many essays in journals on Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Mary Shelley, Henry James Herman Melville and William Faulkner. He is also an award-winning teacher who publishes on literacy and pedagogy.
Jessica Devi Adams, Lecturer in English, University of California-Berkeley. Forced from Tulane University, where she received her Ph.D. and taught, by Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Adams is now associated with the University of California-Berkeley. She is also co-editor, with Cecile Accilien of the collection of essays, “Just Below South: Performing Intercultures in the Caribbean and Southern United States,” to be published by the University of Virginia Press.
Cécile Accilien, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA
Professor Accilien received her Ph.D. in French from Tulane University in New Orleans. She was assistant professor of Francophone and French literature at Portland State university in Oregon previous to her present appointment. She has published in French and English journals and her research interests include representations of women in Caribbean and African literature and contemporary representations of plantations, or habitations in French, in Louisiana and the French Caribbean.
Ulrich Jean-Pierre, Drawing and painting from an early age, the artist received his training from the Foyer des Arts Plastiques in Haiti before being invited to the U.S. and studying at the University of the Arts at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa.
Mr. Jean-Pierre’s fascination with Haitian history forms the basis of his work, which hangs in galleries and museums in the U.S., Haiti, Canada, Europe, and Africa and has been featured in a range of articles and publications.