Episode 28 --- Edwidge Danticat
This episode of the ReadMore podcast was sponsored by the Miami Book Fair International.
Photo Credit: Lynn Savarese
Back in 2015 when no one even knew what the ReadMore podcast was, Edwidge Danticat stepped up to become our first guest, and, for that, I will always love her.
The American Book Award winner and MacArthur Fellow returns to our show this week to discuss her latest book, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. The book was published last year and was a finalist this year for the National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for a PEN Literary Award.
The book is part craft book, part memoir, part literary criticism and part loving tribute to Edwidge's mom who died of cancer in 2014. In it, Edwidge describes what it was like to spend time with her mother during her last days. The book also includes several examples of how writers such as Toni Morrison, Christopher Hitchens and Gabriel García Márquez have tackled the subject of death.
Edwidge and I recently got together at Miami's Freedom Tower to discuss the book, writing in the Age of Trump and the writers she most admires.
Interview Highlights:
Edwidge reveals...
- How writing this book helped her through her grief
- Why she tinkers with her work during readings
- What she sees as the impact of the current political climate on artists
Click here to listen to the podcast. And, you can click here to listen to Edwidge's appearance on our first episode.
We have two, free signed copies of The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story to give away. One will go to the first listener to reach out to us via Twitter or Facebook to tell us the book Edwidge calls the secular bible of life and death. The other copy will go to the first listener to contact us via Twitter or Facebook to tell us two of the writers Edwidge would invite to a dinner party.
If you've won a giveaway in the last 90 days, you're ineligible to win. Also, if you and I ever stood side-by-side in Hill Hall and raised our voices in song, you're probably ineligible. ReadMore does not have a friends and family plan!