To celebrate the release of Haiti Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Edwidge Danticat, Akashic will be spotlighting Haitian organizations on our website. Today, we’re pleased to feature FotoKonbit, a nonprofit organization to which a portion of the profits from Haiti Noir 2 will be donated. We invited FotoKonbit to tell us about their work and to share some of the photography produced by their students.
Join us for two upcoming launch events in New York! Edwidge Danticat will launch Haiti Noir 2: The Classics at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Dweck Center on January 16th, and Laurie Loewenstein and Kaylie Jones will launch Unmentionables and Kaylie Jones Books at Bluestockings on January 22nd!
Read part two of DARK DAYS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, our Haiti-set noir short story that was written by Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2: The Classics contributors in the style of an exquisite corpse, a collaborative writing process in which each author builds a story based upon what his or her predecessors have provided. Haiti Noir contributor M.J. Fievre continues this haunting short story.
Read part one of DARK DAYS IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, our Haiti-set noir short story that was written by Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2: The Classics contributors in the style of an exquisite corpse, a collaborative writing process in which each author builds a story based upon what his or her predecessors have provided. Haiti Noir 2: The Classics contributor Roxane Gay kicks off this haunting short story.
Johnny Temple interviews Dr. Brenda M. Greene, professor of English and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York.
Read about the many Akashic events at and around the Brooklyn Book Festival!
Every Friday, the Akashic team highlights industry news, reviews, and features from around the web. This week’s roundup comes to you from Akashic intern Katie Martinez.
I’m sitting in my father’s chair—a tattered and tired office chair that I’ve lugged to the porch. It is showing its age: scarred faux leather, armrests sprouting prickly stuffing, scents of Papa in the fabric. Half shaded by an acacia tree, I am sipping rich, dark café au lait, scattering a bit on the ground first, just like my father does, to feed our ancestors. The air is soft with breeze and sweet with roasting coffee, the few clouds in the sky moving like fishing boats out on the Caribbean Sea. The voices of the neighborhood rise and fall in spurts. Outside the prisonlike gates of my parents’ house in Kenscoff, young girls balance buckets atop their heads, up and down the graveled roads. Sun-wrinkled women sell huge mangoes and homemade peanut brittle, while boys in cutoff jeans run in circles with makeshift kites or push around trucks made from plastic bottles . . .