Award-Winning Novelist Edwidge Danticat to Receive Honorary Degree from Adelphi University

Award-winning novelist, Edwidge Danticat, will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Adelphi University at its 115th Commencement on Friday, May 20, 2011. The ceremony will begin at 10:00 a.m. in the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, Uniondale, NY.

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was 12. She is the author of several books, many of which discuss Haitian history and the Haitian American experience. Her most recent book is a collection of essays called Create Dangerously. Edwidge Danticat’s memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Some of her other books include Breath, Eyes, Memory, her first novel and an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker.

Additionally, Edwidge Danticat has written three books for young adults and children, Anacaona, Golden Flower, Behind the Mountains, and Eight Days, as well as a travel narrative entitled After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States; The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures; and Haiti Noir, the proceeds of which go to the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a non-governmental organization working towards economic justice, democracy, and alternative sustainable development.

Edwidge Danticat was awarded a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later earned an M.F.A. from Brown University. She has been a visiting professor of creative writing at both New York University and the University of Miami. Currently, she lives in Miami with her husband and daughters.

Adelphi University will confirm more than 2,700 graduates at the associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels at its Commencement. Honorary degrees will also be given to the Honorable Ruth C. Balkin, B.A. ’73, Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division Second Judicial Department, and Suzanne Farrell, creator of and current artistic director for the Suzanne Farrell Ballet Company at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

For more information and the full day’s program, please contact Adelphi’s commencement office at 516.877.4695, or visit the Adelphi Commencement website.