Scheherazade's Sisters: A Conversation with Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat

This event brings together two important and internationally recognized contemporary female voices to talk about a variety of issues ranging from the art and power of story telling, human ‘w/righting’ cross culturally and trans-nationally, feminism, their friendship and dialogue, and their collaboration in organizations such as Border of Lights.

Julia Alvarez (class of 1971), a former tenured faculty at Middlebury and long-time writer in residence, is the author of several award winning novels and books of fiction including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of Butterflies, and The Woman I Kept to Myself. Alvarez also received the National Medal of Art award in 2014. She will retire from Middlebury this spring.

Edwidge Danticat graduated from Barnard College in 1990. She has penned a variety of fiction and non-fiction works that have garnered her widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards including Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak!, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, and the collection of essays entitled Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. She has been the recipient of the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (2007) and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2009), among many other honors.