The Center for Fiction Presents Myriam J. A. Chancy on Village Weavers with Cleyvis Natera

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT April 16, 2024

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

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The Center for Fiction welcomes Myriam J. A. Chancy (What Storm, What Thunder) to discuss her latest novel Village Weavers, which tells the story of Gertie and Sisi—two Haitian girls with an unbreakable bond spanning decades and continents. Their friendship begins in Port-au-Prince in the 1940s, but tensions between their families tear them apart. As the two girls grow up, they find themselves oceans away from each other in Paris and the Dominican Republic, before eventually reuniting decades later in the U.S. Chancy is joined in conversation by award-winning author Cleyvis Natera (Neruda on the Park) who praises Chancy’s “radiant ability to wrestle with history, class, colorism, and racism, while telling a story that is deeply rooted in love.” After the conversation, Chancy will sign books.

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In Conversation

  • lowresMyriamJAChancyAuthorPhoto_creditN.Affonso

    Myriam J. A. Chancy

    Myriam J. A. Chancy

    Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author most recently of the novel Village Weavers (Tin House.) Her previous novel, What Storm, What Thunder, was named a “Best Book of 2021,” by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Globe & Mail, shortlisted for the Caliba Golden Poppy Award & Aspen Words Literary Prize, longlisted for Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize & the OCM Bocas Prize, and awarded an ABA from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her past novels include: The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, Best Fiction 2010; The Scorpion’s Claw and Spirit of Haiti, shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004. She is also the author of several academic monographs, including Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters & Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone.com Journal, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College in California.–


    Photo Credit: N. Affonso

  • Cleyvis Natera by Beowulf Sheehan

    Cleyvis Natera

    Cleyvis Natera

    Cleyvis Natera is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and critic. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was awarded a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction in 2023. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Time, Gagosian Quarterly, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal. Natera has been supported through awards, fellowships and artist residencies by the Vermont Studio Center, PEN America, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. Natera’s second novel, The Grand Paloma Resort, is forthcoming in 2025.


    Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan

Featured Book

  1. . 
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    Village Weavers

    By Myriam J. A. Chancy

    Published by W. W. Norton

    PURCHASE

    From award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families—forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets—and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken. In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier’s rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Dominican family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and—perhaps—forgive the past.

    Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls—connected their entire lives—who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.

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