Edwidge Danticat is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. She received her B.A. in French Literature from Barnard College and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Brown University. She is the author of eighteen books, including, most recently, the essay collection We're Alone. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, a 2018 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, and a two-time National Book Critics Circle Prize winner. Her next book, Watch Out For Falling Iguanas, is forthcoming from Akashic Books in the summer of 2025.