Friday, 7:00 pm EDT September 11, 2026
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
“Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?”
We are pleased to welcome celebrated writer Edwidge Danticat back to The Center for Fiction for the launch of her new novel, Dèy, as part of this year’s Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She will be joined by Monique Truong, author of the award-winning novel The Book of Salt.
Dèy tells the story of Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent who is caught in a random act of violence at a shopping mall in Miami—and decides not to tell anyone about the traumatic experience when she is safely home. In the aftermath of the event, Magnolia begins to reexamine her relationships with the people closest to her: her father; her daughter Zoë; Zoë’s father; and her troubled mother, whose unraveling mental health forces Magnolia to consider if she is also spiraling. Danticat expertly moves between various worlds throughout this vivid, timely story: those of mortals and ghosts, Miami and Haiti, single and married life. With profound warmth, she evokes the importance of shared grief and resilient family ties.
All tickets include a signed copy of Dèy. In-person tickets guarantee a seat, and Danticat will sign books after the event.
Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable.
Featuring
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Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat
Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist; Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times Notable Book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and Krik? Krak!, also a National Book Award finalist. A Neustadt International Prize for Literature winner and the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, she has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere.
Photo Credit: Lynn Savarese
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Monique Truong
Monique Truong
Born in Saigon, South Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), Monique Truong came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975. She’s a novelist, essayist, children’s picture book author, and lyricist/librettist. Her award-winning novels are The Sweetest Fruits (2019), Bitter in the Mouth (2010), and the national bestseller The Book of Salt (2003). Her debut children’s picture book Mai’s Áo Dài (2025) and its forthcoming follow-up are co-written with Thai Nguyen and illustrated by Dung Ho. Truong has collaborated with composers Joan La Barbara, Shih-Hui Chen, Francisco J. Núñez, and Randall Eng. A graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, Truong is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Hodder Fellowship, American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, Young Lions Fiction Award, Bard Fiction Prize, and John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, among other honors. She serves on the boards of the Bogliasco Center and of The Authors Registry, on the Writers Council of The Center for Fiction, and on the Creative Advisory Council of Hedgebrook.
Photo Credit: Haruka Sakaguchi
Featured Book
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Dèy
By Edwidge Danticat
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
“Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die?” These questions haunt Magnolia, a successful Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. When she hears gunfire while at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a nearby restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Once she’s safely home, Magnolia keeps this traumatic event from everyone. But given her life back, she begins to see everything clearly: her extraordinary bond with her daughter, Zoë; her nearly broken relationship with Zoë’s father; the challenges of her mentally troubled mother, whose unraveling patterns Magnolia worries she’s spiraling toward herself; and her father’s affair with a woman who has borne him a child. While struggling through the labyrinth of her past, Magnolia must also come to terms with the losses sustained that life-altering day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti.
Can love or family protect us from harm? Does optimism or fear win out in one’s heart? Which side will prevail for Magnolia? Pulled between these questions, each of which involves a high-stakes choice—Miami or Haiti, single or married, mortal or ghost, before or after—Magnolia is a narrator who is “yon pati koukouy, part firefly”: flitting and shimmering between different worlds.
Taking as its title a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning, Dèy is a profoundly warm and moving novel about the importance not only of sharing grief but also of inseverable family ties. Brave and striking, Dèy is one of Danticat’s most powerful and deeply affecting works yet, told with her signature “unfaltering voice and evocative beauty” (the Boston Globe).
