Joy Keys chats with Author Myriam J.A. Chancy about What Storm, What Thunder

Myriam J. A. Chancy-Guggenheim Fellow & HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College, is a Haitian-Canadian/American writer born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and subsequently raised there and in Canada.  After obtaining her BA in English/Philosophy (4-YR ADV, with Honors), from the University of Manitoba (1989) and her MA in English Literature from Dalhousie University (1990) [pronounced Dal-house-zie], she completed her Ph. D. in English at the University of Iowa (1994).  

Myriam Chancy was awarded the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award for Best Fiction 2010 for her third novel, The Loneliness of Angels (Peepal Tree Press 2010; also shortlisted in the fiction category for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature), garnered a shortlisting for Best First Book, Canada/Caribbean region category, of the Commonwealth Prize in 2004 for her first novel, Spirit of Haiti (London: Mango Publications, 2003), and published a second novel, The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press 2005) to critical praise.

Her novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, What Storm, What Thunder will appear fall 2021 with Harper Collins Canada and Tin House in the USA. At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster.