Edwidge Danticat Wins Short Story Writing Award
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Edwidge Danticat has won this year’s PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. It’s a lifetime lifetime achievement award. The Haitian-American author often writes about memory and identity according to the Associate Press. She is known for her novel-in-stories “The Dew Breaker.”
“Edwidge Danticat is a once-in-a-generation kind of writer, one who changes the landscape of fiction by crafting stories that exalt human experience into the realm of the mythic. It’s impossible to read Danticat’s exquisitely crafted stories and not walk away transformed,” said Dolen Perkins-Valdez, PEN/Malamud Award Committee Chair.
According to PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Danticat will be honored at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony in partnership with American University in December.
Created in honor of the late Bernard Malamud, the award has been given out since 1988. It recognizes writers who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form. Past winners of the Malamud Prize include George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Yiyun Li.
Edwidge Danticat Pays Homage to Haiti
Danticat is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow. Other books Danticat authored include “Breath, Eyes, Memory, The Farming of Bones” and “Everything Inside: Stories.” “Everything Inside: Stories” was a 2020 winner of The Story Prize and the National Books Critics Circle Fiction Prize. She also served as editor for “The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States,” “Haiti Noir,” and more.
“In its conciseness and immediacy, the short story offers a unique way of addressing the complex emotions and realities that consume and haunt me and bring me joy,” Danticat said. “Many of my short stories pay homage to the oral tradition I was steeped in as a child in Haiti and as an immigrant in the United States. The short story has also been a unique space for me to experiment, explore, and grow as a storyteller, which makes this award even more gratifying.”
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