CANCELED: Edwidge Danticat, Award-Winning Haitian Author, Tonight at Central Library

UPDATE: 6:41 p.m. The event was canceled for tonight.

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Edwidge Dandicat, the award-winning Haitian-born author, will be joined by two other writers at the Central Library at 7 p.m. tonight to read from the new short story collection, "Haiti Noir."

Dandicat, perhaps the most well-known contemporary Haitian writer, edited the new anthology.  She is a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur “genius award,” whose novel "The Farming of Bones" won the American Book Award in 1999. 

"Haiti Noir." includes 18 stories about the crime, poverty, spirituality and occasional redemption that has marked Haitian life for decades, but particularly in the wake of last year’s devastating earthquake. 

Reviewing the collection for the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Kellogg writes that the stories push the boundaries of traditional noir fiction – all stylized crime and shadowy characters – “into something more ethereal.”

“Ghosts and gods figure in these narratives,” says Kellogg, “as do the ideas that powerful emotions — particularly vengeance — can empower uncanny action.”

Joining Dandicat will be Marie Lily Cerat and Ibi Aanu Zoboi, whose story “Harem” in the collection is one of the few that deals directly with the recent earthquake.

 The event, in the library’s Dweck Center, is free and open to the public.