Every time I run into some old friends of my parents who still live in Haiti, or who come to visit and engage me in dialogue, I often hear how impressed they are that my French has remained impeccable.

And I suppose it’s a compliment I should accept, given the fact that my parents paid top dollar when they sent me to the best of schools in Port-au-Prince. But with this comes a flash of PTSD that takes me back to the late eighties, to the very moment when I began to develop what W. E. Dubois calls Double Consciousness — although oddly enough, in this case, I was experiencing this double consciousness within my own culture.

I was about eleven years old, maybe twelve. I was in a car with my cousins and my aunt D. We were in Haiti, on a gorgeous day, and it’s a day I still remember, because it was one of those rare days of my life where I actually got to spend time with family. I grew up so sheltered and cloistered, and on the outskirts of the bustling city life, that I mostly socialized in school.

But most importantly, I grew up in Haiti with my father. My mother had moved to Florida after my brother was born, and most of her family was already in America. Very few of her relatives were left in Haiti, my aunt D. being one of them. And I loved going to see her and my cousins.

I remember how brilliant the sky was, how the sun seemed to pour gold all over as we climbed in her car. I think we were headed out to the mountains. And I sat in the back between my cousins, my heart bursting with excitement to finally be in good company, and to be going somewhere, anywhere but my house where I was always trapped, reading books. All day long. Reading. All. Day. Long. It’s how I became who I am today, force-fed a steady diet of books.

I got so excited, I made a joke, and I don’t remember anymore what it was, but it was in Creole. It came out naturally, because we were all in a pleasant, joking mood. Some jokes land better in Creole.

And my aunt, who was backing out of the driveway, immediately turned around and snapped: “Comment ça, Fabienne, do you not know how to speak French?”

I remember my entire face burning. My ears turned red, I lowered my eyes, and the joy drained out of my entire body. I immediately felt compelled to apologize.

Until this day, I never forgot this incident, even if she herself was repeating a quiet cycle of violence of which she herself was victim.

This was my first memory of the languistic shaming, a violence inflicted by colonization, and the worst part was that it was being passed down to me by family, who had themselves experienced it from their environment: family, and mostly, school. The same school I went to, because that’s where many of my relatives were educated.

At one point, I was in school at the same time as my youngest aunt. An all-girl Catholic insitution led by nuns who policed everything, from the length of our skirts (below the knees, not above), and the way we kept warm in lower temperatures (sweaters under the blouses, not outside because God forbid we start expressing ourselves through fashion choices), to the jewelry we wore (only a small medallion dedicated to Mother Mary or a crucifix, lest we forget the agonizing death of Jesus for our sins).

How we carried ourselves was their responsibility, from our hair follicles to our toes. There were days where the Prefect even checked our nails for nail polish, and made us scrape off any semblance of nail tint or polish with a ruler (shaming, anyone?). Our bodies were surveiled and policed as if it belonged to them, as if their job was to prep it for God, as if God liked plain, not pretty. Similarly, what came out of our mouths also did not belong to us.

Back in the time of my mother’s generation, and my aunts’ generation, speaking Creole in school was strictly forbidden. The reasons given varied, but the idea was always the same: “Creole was not a real language, it was not sophisticated, it was pedestrian, that it held us back.”

Some schools, back in those days, punished children severely for speaking it, either by spanking children, or pitting children against each other, encouraging them to denounce those who were caught speaking the language. Anyone caught would pay the price, either by wearing a dunce hat and standing in the corner, or wearing some kind of marker around their neck all day so the whole school would know: here comes the culprit, the one who speaks the tongue of the lowly.

Similarly, not speaking French properly, poorly pronouncing or enunciating words, having poor diction or grammar, was fodder for ridicule. No one was exempt from this, not even the teachers.

Sister T., a French Canadian prefect in my school, once said out loud that Creole was “vulgar.” She said this in the early nineties. And unfortunately for her, by that time, my generation was fiercely rebelling. The girls pushed back immediately. “Don’t talk that way about our mother tongue. It’s not dirty, it’s not vulgar. It’s the language of our ancestors, it’s not inferior to yours.”

Before my generation, students were made to conjugate verbs in Greek and Latin, and sit through mass, expected to answer to every Dominus Vobiscum with Et Cum Spiritu Tuo. The nuns were the enforcers of colonization, doing the job of the Church which was to impose a way of living, a way of speaking, a way of “evolving.”

By the time I stepped into that generational gap, Latin and Greek, thank the ancestors, were replaced by Spanish and, thank to a push by the awakening of the people, Creole!

Now, we were learning to read and write our own Mother tongue, and now the girls were putting Sister T. back in her place. “Creole is a language, with its own grammar, ruled by its own academy. It’s not a patois, it’s not broken. It is ours.”

I’ll never forget the little smirk on her face in response, and the silence that ensued. She had no comeback for that. But we knew, once we went home, that the evening in the dormitory would be fraught and the chapel would be illuminated with prayer candles. We could almost hear the nuns running Hail Marys through their beaded rosaries before calling the Archidiocese for reinforcement: “The girls are rebelling, Monsignor! What do we do?”

We were rebelling alright. My generation learned to code switch. I don’t remember how or when we all agreed that we would speak Creole amongst ourselves. But we just did, naturally, because it’s what we do as friends, as family, any time we congregate in the courtyard or at recess. Creole rolls out of our mouth like fresh spring water. And then, as soon as the Sisters came around — and they tried to be stealth like with their soft Hush Puppies on their feet — we switched to French.

This behavior is exactly what slaves did to survive on plantations. This is exactly how Creole was born. Hundreds of enslaved Africans from different tribes across the continent forced to coexist under the savagery of slavery, were forced to find a common language to communicate among themselves in a way that the overseers and the plantation owners could not understand.

Creole is the language of liberation. And I mean this not just to romanticize the concept, not just for dramatic effect. Creole not only frees us from the restraints of an imposed colonial language, but it liberates us from its constraints.

Creole, for instance, unlike French or Spanish, does not concern itself with the use or importance of male or female pronouns. There is no he or she. There is only li.

And I want to make the point here that in spite all of this, I do appreciate the school I attended for its rigorous education. It remains one of the best institutions in the country, and my parents worked hard to keep me enrolled.

In my previous essay, I wrote about how difficult it is for me today to keep up with the language at home, to teach it to my kids, and although that is still true, it doesn’t change the fact that I discover new things about this language that fascinate me every day. I uncover new expressions that I never knew and I realize that maybe I don’t even know Creole as well as I thought I did, or at least not like half the people roaming the streets of Haiti.

These days, I follow every piece of news that contains the word “decolonize” or that speaks to the movement. The latest to come across my feed? Burkina Faso abandons French as an official language. I don’t think I’ve read a more beautiful headline, lately. Every single country in the Sahel region, or every state in West Africa that is putting its foot down to step out of the shadow of the colonizer is a breath of fresh air to my polluted lungs.

And there are myriads of ways to go about decolonizing, from regaining currency control to rejecting or paying back debt, to achieving self-sufficiency. But language… Language is such a tool of control, that it seeps into every single corner of our lives. In Haiti, since inception, every piece of legislation, banking, birth certificate, everything under the sun was writte in French, in a country where according to this 2025 Haitian Times article, more than 2.5 million Haitians cannot read or write. Imagine them being forced to learn or read in French, a language they can’t speak or understand?

All Haitians speak Creole. All of them. Only a minority of Haitians speak French.

The tide, however, has been turning for us as it is in Africa. It started since 1987, when the Constitution of Haiti recognized Creole as an official language, giving it equal footing with French.

“This was a turning point — not just legally, but symbolically. It affirmed that Haitian Creole is not a "dialect" or a second-class language, but the heart of Haitian identity. It was also an act of Linguistic Justice, restoring dignity to the everyday speech of millions.” - Creole Solutions.

I’m back there again when now Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are withdrawing from the French Language body. For anyone who has never been imposed another language, this news is perhaps trivial. Perhaps it goes unnoticed.

But for us, who’ve had to fight against this imposition of words and verbs and diction and grammar our entire lives, this is no small feat. And the more these countries withdraw, the more these French bodies or organizations are left weakened, and the more the colonizer (in this case, France) loses leverage or control in communication.

I can hear the questions now: “But French is important as a language. It’s a more widely spoken tongue. They can use French to dialogue with many other nations if they stick with the status quo and keep French as their official language.”

But so what? The day of the colonizer has come and gone. It’s a new day, and a new dawn. It’s our turn now. Maybe it’s up to the world to move past French and open doors for new languages, new ways of dealing and trading in new markets. Maybe it’s up to the world as it is to learn Hausa, to take up Mandarin, to study Arabic.

Maybe it’s time for all of us to catch up, and start learning Creole.

Because the new generations are made of us, the children of the world who communicate in ways our parents and grandparents before us did not. And the more walls are built to keep languages out, the more those tongues will seep through the cracks like water, and find their way through, wè pa wè, vle pa vle, like it or not.

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I find my dog at the bottom of the ramp in the laundry room and he immediately looks up at me with this face of his, the one he’s perfected over the years to look effortlessly innocent but that I never buy.

“Harley! What are you doing?”

His eyes are blank. His face is blank. His stare is blank.

“Stop it right now! I know what you’re doing, stop it! I can’t trust you for one second, mwen pa ka fè w konfyans pou yon minit ! Tonnèr ! Depi m vire do m se pou misye jwenn jan pou l fè bouch mwen long…”

It’s all the same to my dog. Whether it’s English or Creole, all he hears is displeased screeching. His response is always the blank stare because at the end of the day, he is a dachshund.

If you know the breed, you know. If you don’t, know this: dachshunds are notorious for their selective hearing. Meaning they will choose the words they want to obey, and stare right past you or through you and feign deafness when you tell them the commands they don’t care for. Harley will freeze like a statue and stare for hours until you, the human, decide to heel.

He. will. not. budge.

I will argue in his defense that at his age (although he has been like this all of his life) he is entitled to enjoy life and ignore what doesn’t bring him pleasure. But also, as he gets older, his hearing is getting worse.

If I come home and close the door, and remove my shoes, he won’t hear it. I have to actively go to him and pet him, or SLAM the door for him to know that something is happening.

Thunder or fireworks still frighten him, but to a lesser degree. He sleeps through it now, sometimes unaware that it’s happening.

But right now, I know he can hear me. Or I know he can see me yapping away. But he can’t understand what I’m saying, certainly not in Creole.

And it’s not his fault. I haven’t been speaking Creole with my dog that long. I don’t think he knows he’s half Haitian.

I haven’t been speaking my native tongue at home that long at all, except for the past year or so when, out of nowhere, it just started spilling out of my lips. Bursting. I have imaginary arguments with myself in Creole while cooking (you know the ones — the unifinished business you rehearse in your head when suddenly have a retort for that nasty comment that person made to you last year), I drop things or bump into walls or stub my toe and curse in Creole, I answer questions or even answer the phone in Creole.

The most obvious moment signaling this transformation came in the moments when I started scolding my children or answering them in a tone of impatience, in Creole. The first few times, they narrowed their eyes, scrunched up their faces and looked at their father, their eyes pleading for help. “Huh? What did she say?”

These days, they look at me the same way Harley looks at me now. Except the dynamic has changed. Now, it has become a guessing game. My son tries to guess what it is that I’m saying. If I want him to turn the light off and I forget the word for light (believe me, things like this have happened before), he will stand there and play the game for at least five minutes.

“Close the door?”

“No.”

“Open the door?”

“No!”

“Get your purse? I don’t get it… Say it again?”

By now, you’re wondering why I haven’t taught my children, who are now both six and eleven years old, my native language. And the answer is simple.

I tried. And I failed.

I used to speak with my son in French in the beginning, after he was born. And even then I could tell he was taking a long time to catch up with the language. It’s like he was resisting it. Like he was doing it intentionally. I still remember strapping him in his carseat from the grocery store and offering him an apple, and saying the word repeatedly. “Pomme. Pomme. Tu veux manger la pomme?”

He would not say it. And I turned around to push the cart away, and that’s when he finally said it. “Pomme.”

I was so surprised, I almost danced in the parking lot. He gave me a hint of a smile and that was that. Never again did he repeat the word.

He did the same thing again with the word water. “Tu veux de l’eau?” Religiously, I used the phrase, and he never said it until he was almost in his second year, and he was fussing, and I got up to go to the kitchen and heard him cry out, “De l’eau!”

Selective speaking?

By the time my daughter was born, I had given up on French. My husband had never learned either language even though he had attempted a lesson or two. And it is exhausting, truthfully, to be the minority in a household where English was spoken. I just folded and gave into the daily usage of English.

It also doesn’t help that most of my family is scattered. I’m an orphan, I don’t have the luxury of taking my children to their grandparents like my other cousins or friends do. Usually, this is where kids get exposed to the Haitian language and culture. They only get to visit my grandmother (their great grandmother) or my aunts every few weeks or so. There, they hear Creole spoken around them, but not with them, so the chances of them learning are minimal.

By the time my daughter arrived in the world, I had decided to try again with speaking more, but this time I had switched to Creole.

Before, with French, I had reasoned with myself that they could at least travel around the world and communicate with others - in France, Morocco, Senegal, Ageria, or Martinique and Guadeloupe, the opportunities were there. I had told myself that Haitian Creole was only limited to Haiti. Where else could they go with that?

Today however, the language is not asking for permission. It’s actively liberating itself and jumping out of my mouth, and it’s shifting my perspective with it. It’s forcing me to confront this truth: why would Haiti be considered a limitation? Why would Haiti not be a well of potential? And if it does have the possibility to grow and change, despite the skepticism and hopelessness peddled by the West, then who is to change it, if not the children? And how can they do this if they don’t know the first thing about the language?

Thoughts that keep me awake these days.

So my younger relatives who have children are going out of their way to surround and immerse their children in the culture, and now my duty is to do the same. I’m starting to play a bit more Haitian and Caribbean music in the car. I’m starting to shift the television programming around at home. I am starting to cook more Haitian food, and use more Haitian idioms around them.

Right now, they don’t know the curse words yet, which is good for me because it allows me to express myself freely when I’m angry, without being understood.

For now, I’m allowing myself to emote and speak in the language that is pouring out of me unapologetically, and even the dog will have to learn a few commands in Creole. The more I return to the language though, the more something happens in me that I didn’t expect.

I know what you’re thinking: joy? A renewed sense of self?

Yes, but I’ll be honest, there is a deep sense of nostalgia that comes back to the surface, a sadness that took me years to comprehend. I miss my home country, but I also miss my family, and mostly, I miss my parents. I am still grieving their presence and I feel robbed of it.

Every other relative of mine, every cousin or aunt who has given birth to children are fortunate to have parents step in. Those children can now look to Papi or their Manmi to feed them daily Diri Nasyonal, to teach them the words like Bonjou or Chita, to dress them in the cultural Karabela on flag day, to sing them to sleep: Dodo titit, all while I, the working parent, is away from the house.

I will never have that. And I’ll be a big girl about it, and accept it because I can’t change it. But it reduces me to tears every time I think about it.

So, the truth is, this is also why it took me so long to get out of my own grief and into my own culture. I’m still swimming through it. And it’s a very lonely battle, one that no one sees me fight. Except perhaps my dog…

I yank the towel away from him and I look for the stain that was there, concerned that he may have found it and licked it, or chewed it. It was chocolate, and I am panicking that he may get sick from it.

I find my breath again when I find the stain intact.

“Pati!” I tell him. “Out, now! Bad boy!”

I know it’s not his fault, it’s mine. I should never have left that towel there, and I’m blaming myself. For the rest of the day, I’m still monitoring him in case he’s had a lick. He is just that kind of dog, you see. Selective hearing is only half of the problem. The other, if you haven’t guessed it, is gluttony.

And that one is incorrigible.

Meanwhile, if you have tips for this writer on how to immerse the children even more into their culture and language, let’s hear it in the comments.

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I’ve written about the oral tradition here before and how important it is, but today I’m realizing what a gift it has been all my life. No, this won’t be another story about my grandfather (even though I sincerely revered him as the conteur he was).

Instead, I want to talk about something that happened over the summer with my son, who is only eleven and is already getting swept up in the world of technology. Video games have stolen his passion for reading, and it has been a serious source of distress for me, a writer mom who has taken so much pride in having a reading child. My son used to spend weekends lounging in laundry baskets and reading books, or turning pages during long road trips. I even once caught him in the bathroom finishing a book, using the covered toilet as a table.

Those days are gone. These days, he can’t make it half an hour without asking me to turn on the hot spot in the car so he can play his Nintendo Switch or watch his YouTube influencers try out video games.

Even my best friend, with whom I used to read books with long distance (we used to start the same book at the same time and discuss chapters over the phone - Sidney Sheldon was a favorite of ours), now tells me she has no patience or focus for books anymore. She can’t sit and read.

So more and more of us, I notice, are turning to audio, and thank God for the audio format. Because it may not involve the eyes, but that too is reading - reading with the ears, if you will.

So my husband came up with a brilliant idea: what if we got my son books to read while he listened to the audio format at the same time? It was worth a shot!

This proved trickier than we thought. Because we are big library users, we thought we could easily borrow from there, but it’s apparently quite difficult to find a book in both formats at the same time. So we’re still working on this. But I have no doubt this will prove to be efficient. How do I know? Because I grew up in a culture that relied heavily on listening as a form of learning.

In Haiti, our storytelling journey has always begun in the oral format, starting with folktales and songs passed on from one generation to the next. No matter where you go in the country, everyone knows the tales of Bouki and Malis, even if they vary regionally. Our rural upbringing involves sitting outside around fires, engaging in the art of tire kont, pulling folktales out of a proverbial bag.

The truth is, Haitians, like all Caribbeans, like all African people, LOVE to tell stories. And not just folktales. We love to entertain each other with a good story, about what happened to us today when we left home and caught a taxi to run an errand, or what happened with the neighbor.

Whether it’s gossip or chisme as my Spanish-speaking friends say, or good old banter, it’s the idea of taking our time to set up and deliver the story that enchants us. It gives us joy. And a component of telling a good story is listening.

Listening saved our lives.

When Haiti has faced natural disasters or catastrophic epidemics throughout history, Haitians have always relied on the art of listening to preserve each other’s health and well-being. The Center for Disease Control reported a decline in HIV and TB infections in Haiti due in part to public education, which many don’t realize includes campaigns led not just by NGO’s.

How did we do this? Radio played a big part. During the AIDS crisis, Haitian artists, including actors and musicians, went on the offensive. They understood they could use their platform and visibility, and they quickly produced songs and jingles about safe sex, condom usage, and commercials. Every day, the population was bombarded by information on the radio 24/7.

Listening to stories for me, growing up, was like sharpening my edges against the spinning wheel before sending me out to write. Our popular soap opera, Woy! Les Voila! was on the radio, and the country was hooked. Because we didn’t have the visuals on television, we were forced to use our imagination to envision the characters, the homes, the settings: what they looked like, what our favorite female protagonist was wearing, or how the living room was decorated.

It’s a skill we rely on often without even realizing its importance. And I’m pressed these days, as I’m speaking with my agent and others in the publishing industry to consider different modes of writing, to think about what writing would look like if we were composing stories that were meant to be heard? Because the stories we listened to on the radio, without visuals, were rich in detail.

Our greatest conteur of all time, Maurice Sixto, would draw on the richness of Haitian culture to bring all the sauce into a story: the idioms, the mannerisms, the expressions, the descriptions.

Whether someone was sucking their teeth or hoisting up their skirts in disdain, or stirring their coffee, or insulting someone, or hailing a taxi cab, everything was so vivid you could hear it, see it, smell it, taste it, even though all you had to go by was a snippet on the radio.

No sound effects, just his voice telling a story. But you could visualize it.

Here is an excerpt of what that sounds like in the case of Maurice Sixto.

But those were also prevalent in English. I listened to many whodunnits, detective noir stories, and mysteries on the radio growing up, with a couple of sound effects to accompany the narrative, which was quite a privilege for me since I was in a country where few people had access to English-language programming.

All in all, what I’m drawing from this is that there is power in sound, in audio, in paying attention to what we hear. Our stories can be transformative if we channel all of our attention into the details there: the rustle of leaves, the clap of thunder, the shatter of broken glass or the clicking of heels indicating the nervous pacing of a woman awaiting her lover in the dark… Where might sound take you?

Writing Exercises + Prompts

One of my favorite stories in African mythology is that of Jakuta, the ancient god of thunder. He precedes Shango (he is referred to as Shango’s father). The story goes that the people of his village loved him, but when he opened his mouth to speak, what came out was so loud that it sounded like the roar of thunder, and his people had to cover their ears. Jakuta is the Hurler of Stones, God of thunder and lightning. I’ve been fascinated my entire life by that sound, and how in Haiti, we have that visual description or understanding of thunder as rocks being hurled.

Prompt #1:

Write your own story about sound or about listening. It could be a story about the inception or birth of sound, a myth like the one about Jakuta. ‘

Prompt #2

Write the first pages of a play adapted for radio. Allow it to be dialogue-heavy, but allow the dialogue and sound to guide the narrative and inform your audience. Remember that now, in this instance, your audience is not a reader, but a listener. How might our experience change by listening? Most importantly, how might your writing change? Or does it stay the same?

I’ve been releasing a series of reels on social media lately focused on Haitian tradition and culture (as part of a larger project I have in mind for the future). But for now, the intention is to tie them to my work as an author.

I just finished one about the name of my birth country, Haiti. And it got me thinking about the importance of naming.

In the video, I discuss the meaning of Haiti’s full name. That’s right, I said full name. Did you know Haitians refer to Haiti as Ayiti Toma?

When I was a child, I thought it was a full human name: first and last name. And I always found it funny that we were the only country to have one of those. I thought it was first name Haiti, last name Thomas.

It wasn’t until recently that I learned why Haiti bears this name.

After the Haitian Revolution, Haitian leaders rejected the colonial name, Saint-Domingue. Instead, they chose to return to the original Native name Ayiti (land of the high mountains) - to honor the Indigenous people who lived on the island first.

Then, our African forefathers added the word TOMA - a variation on the word Gedevi-Dahomey word TOME, which means “country” or “land.”

So Ayiti Toma is a declaration, an affirmation. When Haitians say Ayiti Toma, they’re essentially claiming their land, their home, their country. But it’s also a term of endearment. They usually use the term when missing home, talking about Haiti like a lover waiting patiently back home.

What I’m getting at here is that the naming was ceremonious, intentional, important. Indigenous people had already named it before anyone came to “claim it,” and Haitians ensured the name, although modified, would survive colonization, slavery, and erasure. And that moving forward, the new inhabitants could build something new.

Ayiti - or Haiti - is an origin story, and this is where writers enter the picture.

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Naming is the first act of world-building.

I have this outline I use for myself (it’s really a plot plan), written down on paper, and also memorized, and before I write any novel, I refer to that plot. It’s a method of pitching the story to myself or to an invisible editor. It helps me know, clearly, what the story is and where it’s going. It helps me articulate it.

In order to know it and build it, I have to name it. And here’s what never works, every single time: writing out that plan or outline without a character name.

I can live without a title name for a while. But characters must be named. I’m currently working on a short story where a character’s name is a mystery and it’s a work of labor, it’s driving me insane. It’s difficult to not have a label or appelation for this person who has such an important role in the story. Key characters must be identified.

Have you tried writing a story with a character named X? Or Y? Or Jane Doe?

It’s torture. It doesn’t feel right. Because your story isn’t about Jane Doe, is it? It’s about a specific person who has a name, a story, an origin that perhaps you don’t know yet. But you know your job as the creator of that world, as the person birthing the narrative, is to go find out.

Before you build a character, before you write a scene, before you construct a plot — you name. I can’t move forward until I have an idea of what that name might be, even if I end up refining it later on. Because every name carries identity, carries politics.

Naming is an origin story. It’s where your place or your character or your story really begins.

And just as naming is important, renaming holds weight and meaning. Often, renaming is also an act of violence.

While the Taíno people named the island Ayiti, colonization sought ownership in renaming it. The island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, together, is still referred to as Hispaniola, while the French during their colonial period named it Saint Domingue. Forcing a new title upon a person or a land is a deliberate attempt at changing its identity. So the colonizers went from “land of the high mountains” to naming the country after a figure from the Catholic Church.

It’s like that scene from Roots, the series, when Kunta Kinte refuses to accept his new name of Toby and has to withstand lashes as punishment for his defiance. Kunta Kinte knew the intention behind the renaming. It strips one of all identity.

I also listened two artists in conversation recently, and one Haitian artist was discussing the origin of Haitian last names. It wasn’t until he voiced it that I realized the meaning of so many of our names: Monpremier, Mondésir, for example, were such coded colonial names. For me, all my life, they were names, until I realized what they might have meant in the mouth of a slave owner speaking to others about its slaves.

Again - names are an origin story, and names can be an undoing.

In reverting to the original name of Ayiti, the Revolutionary leaders of Haiti sought to restore justice and balance, to regain that identity and instill in it new life, a promise to carry on with new blood, new bodies, new love for this land that helped us survive.

In the same way, I think we as writers have a responsability to our stories in choosing names, because of what those choices reveal about power, identity, and belonging.

Additional tips when writing names in fiction

• Avoid starting character names with the same letter (Peter, Paul, Payton) and having them have the same number of syllables (Mary, Cindy, Sarah, Laura). I encourage you to push the envelope and experiment more with names.

• When I first started writing, I used to keep (I still have one) a phone book. It’s falling apart now, but I kept it because it held a list of first and last names that I could pick from and combine when naming my characters.

• Listen to children! Kids’ instincts in choosing names is powerful. They know naturally that names carry character, and as a writer, your instinct tells you this as well. I used to want a different name as a child. I wanted my parents to rename me Florence. I loved the name, and I thought I could carry it, and I’m glad they never listened to me (I ended up naming my doll Florence instead). Florence was the name of my aunt, a tall, striking woman who lived in France and modeled for Yves Saint Laurent with long legs and a long neck, a woman who commanded attention when she entered a room. A woman like that was a Florence. I am not a Florence. The other Florence I think of when I hear the name was the defiant and wise-cracking housekeeper from The Jeffersons, confirming once again that I am not a Florence.

• Take a page from your favorite authors and your favorite books. In his novel James, Percival Everett weighs the subject when he touches upon the naming of enslaved people, forcing upon them “Christian names” or the names of their “masters,” and yet the protagonist himself is driven to freedom for the restoration of his and his family’s dignity, ending with the proud proclamation, “My name is James.” Except by then, James as a name is not seen as an imposition. It is liberation. The state of affairs has changed and now we can, of course, feel a different tone in the name. What happens in between is the journey, and the change the character has undergone. You might adopt the same method for yourself.

• Journal names - this one is obvious. Keep a notebook with you as a writer at all times, or these days, your phone with a note app. Each time you encounter an interesting name, write it down. And come back to them later. This is how you keep your own phone book or Roladex of names.

Writing Prompt

Write the scene in which your character's name is taken from them. Then write the scene in which they take it back

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I got the email a couple of weeks ago, from my agent, who might be reading this (hi Charlotte), asking me where I am in the writing process of the next book because it’s time for the next one. And let’s just say that yes, I am writing.

It’s just that sometimes, writing is like driving down a road and hitting a sign that says DETOUR.

I’ve been taking detours. Which is to say, I’ve been writing things other than the novel.

There’s nothing wrong with detours. It doesn’t mean you stop driving. Right?

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I stumbled upon this 1975 interview with Marguerite Duras, author of The Lover, where she is asked the question: what is a free woman? A liberated woman?

If you’re a man and you’re reading this, come along for the ride. By the end of this piece, I’d love to hear from you on how you come to view a woman’s world in the context of liberation.

Duras’ answer haunts me still, because it is very reminiscent of Nina Simone. Here’s what I mean. Here is Marguerite Duras’ answer, translated from the French, where she offers concrete examples of a free, liberated woman.

“A woman who walks into a cafe, for example, to drink a Scotch at the bar, at midnight, in Paris or in Montreal, without any fear.”

And then of course she lights her cigarette, but she’s not done answering.

Marguerite Dura’s liberated woman

“It’s not a woman who makes a movie, or who starts a business. Not at all. It’s that woman who will go out there at midnight because she feels like a Scotch. Very simply, she feels like going out to a bar to get a Scotch. She goes. And if they make fun of her, she won’t hear it. She doesn’t care. That’s freedom. Just as freedom for a worker is the end of fear of his boss.”

In Duras’ mind, a true socialist worker (not in the Stalinian meaning) doesn’t have to fear his boss or his employer, and he can walk right past him, eyes fixed on the trees ahead. And that is how women should also walk into a bar, past the eyes fixed on them, unafraid. She sees no difference.

I find these few minutes exchanged between Duras and the interviewer incredibly powerful. There’s a lot of gravitas in Duras’ voice and persona, I can feel it, but what I love is the calm with which she explains this liberation, the way it makes so much sense to any woman who will ever hear this, any woman who will ever read these words. To have no fear, to move through the eye of the needle of this world, eternal subject of the patriarchal gaze, and to sit at a bar at midnight, alone, and order a drink.

There’s something very sexy about this to me. Very desirable. But is it unattainable? Women can make it to the bar at midnight and order a Scotch, no question. But what happens as a result? What are the repercussions for pushing the boundaries and taking such liberties? Is she a harlot, now? Does she get judged for it? Insulted? Does she get mistaken for a prostitute and therefore harassed the entire night by men looking for an escort?

The truth is, the women who can achieve this are are these days, and if they are growing by the numbers, they are pushing boundaries in a world that is still full of judgement, a world that still sets expectations for them and wants them to be both working and raising children at the same time.

Video Credit: Radio-Canada Archives

As a writer, it is my job to be struck by these little bits of interviews and pieces of historical or archival documents and videos, and literature that make me question society and dwell on complexity. It is my job to do so so that I can create stories and characters that are dimensional rather than flat.

I am thinking of my female characters in the past, who they’ve been and how I’ve written them. Could any of my female characters walk into a bar in their city of choice and order a drink at midnight without caring about the sneers, comments, and judgments?

Nina Simone’s Freedom vs. Fear

Nina Simone’s definition of freedom, at first, in a 1968 interview with Peter Rodis, is that freedom is just a feeling. It’s hard to explain. Like love is hard to explain. You know it when it happens.

If you watch the interview, you’ll notice the passion on Simone’s face, the way she is burning with a fire she can’t contain because she is speaking of something she actually feels in her bones, and she’s in the moment with Peter Rodis, trying to convey to him what that is like. It is clear that she knows what’s talking about, and whoever else is in the room with her knows she’s right about this. Love is hard to explain, it’s just something you feel.

“I’ve had a couple of times on stage when I really felt free,” she says. And to hear herself say it is like a revelation, and her face lights up. “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear!”

Two women, different worlds apart, fighting different struggles, but somehow meeting in between, and expressing the same idea around a desire for freedom as defined by a complete absence of fear.

It’s important for me to know the context for this famous quote because, without it, one would think Nina Simone is headed into battle. Now we know she’s not. She’s just exuding joy, expressing passion, and recognizing the connection between love and freedom.

Video credit: Mathis Lacroix on YouTube

Perhaps what gets me the most is the look on Simone’s face when she realizes the possibilities of a world where she could have no fear. It’s not that she already has a world with no fear. She isn’t free yet, you see. She hasn’t gotten there yet, although she’s had moments of it. Here, she’s experiencing a sort of revelation, as if she’s just now awakening to the fact that the freedom she’s talking about is something fleeting, ephemeral, that sometimes visits but doesn’t always last.

But if she could have that for just half of her life… We would have to imagine what life would have been like for her with that degree of freedom, although we already know that the great Nina Simone led a life recording some of the world’s most memorable music with one of the world’s most unforgettable voices. But again, it’s the look on her face. Just imagine…

Okay, so let’s imagine together, shall we? Because it’s what writers do, and I’m tempted to do something I’ve never done before, which is to write toward the future. Shall we?

I’ve never imagined a future world on the page, but hearing these women gives me a great desire to write toward a world that we could be building together. What if we make a world that we want to see, that we actually want to live in?

What if we did live in a world where women were fearless enough to walk into a bar at midnight, light a cigarette if she wanted, and order a drink without caring the whispers and the judgment?

What if there was no judgment? What if everyone minded their business because seeing her walk in at midnight transcended rebellion? What if it was so normalized that it didn’t even disrupt the men in the bar? What would that look like?

I’ve been seriously pondering, lately, what the world would be like if we only had the sense to put women in charge.

So what if, in addition to writing about our present world, we also wrote toward this imagined future where women could, in fact, attain this level of freedom described by Duras and Simone?

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I am running an hour late for my visit to Edouard Duval-Carrié’s studio and I’m mortified, but there’s only so much I can do to fight Miami’s unpredictable traffic. I detest being late to appointments because I value people’s time, and this meeting is more than a thrill for me.

The first time I met Duval-Carrié, we had both been invited to present out work at Nova Southeastern University. I gave a reading from a recent publication on Haitian immigrants surviving stereotypes and prejudices in this new American landscape.

Duval-Carrié, on the other hand, revealed stunning art works soaked in luminous hues that not only captured the audience, but also cemented his presence in our psyche and in our memories.

I understood then the importance of an artist’s work, and the magnitude of Edouard Duval-Carrié’s oeuvre. He was here to demystify Haiti, sure, but also to complicate it.

When I arrive at the studio, he is already sitting in this beautiful velvet chaise patiently waiting, his eyes piercing. I am apologizing away for my tardiness, but my eyes are begging me to slow down so they may wander and take in the beauty around me.

There is so much to see, from portraits and masks, and three-dimensional pieces with carved flowers and foliage and glittered details outlining the shapes and figures on the walls, historical heroes of Haitian independence here, anthropomorphic trees there, and motifs and entities from our Haitian Vodou speckled everywhere.

I am in heaven.

I am not just in his studio, but in his mind, and Duval-Carrié tells stories in the same way I do, except he uses the most exquisite mediums like paint, glass, glitter and resin to build worlds without having to explain himself. The work often speaks of the history and the mysticism of Haiti, of the Caribbean, and their intersection with the rest of the world.

For decades, Duval-Carrié has fleshed out right before our eyes Haiti’s mythologies, its revolution, its political role vis-a-vis the West, and brought the world’s first free Black Republic into full, undeniable view, and to be in his creative space is more than a momentous occasion. In addition to his artwork gracing the 2026 Haiti Winter Olympic Uniform, Edouard Duval-Carrié was selected among 111 artists to present his work at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest, largest and most prestigious international contemporary art exhibitions.

This is the ideal time to engage in conversation with him, on the kind of Miami afternoon that is warm and still, and time comes to a halt long enough for me to absorb the genius of Edouard Duval-Carrié.

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The Riderless Horse

When his artwork was chosen to adorn the uniform of the Haitian Winter Olympic Team, Duval-Carrié was in disbelief. But the good kind. Haiti is a tropical Caribbean country after all, and it never crossed his mind as one to participate in the Winter Games.

Still, the occasion was momentous and made Haitians proud, and for the artist, it was exactly the sort of opportunity the world needed to shed their flattened, single story of his people.

So, he said yes immediately. “Open the archives. Take what you need.”

The painting we have all seen during the 2026 Winter Games on the Stella Jean Haitian team uniforms is that of a red horse riding against lush foliage and a beautiful sky for a backdrop. It was a showstopper, landing the uniform on the best-in-class Olympic fashion lists.

But soon, what became the subject of conversation specifically was the horse. The red horse, with a saddle, but no rider.

Where was the rider?

When the moment came for this image to travel on the bodies of Haitian athletes across a global stage, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) demanded that the rider, Toussaint Louverture, be removed from the uniform, citing rules of political neutrality.

But to Duval-Carrié, the subtext was clear: they wanted the hero of Haitian history, the man who defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and his army, the liberator of the first free Black Nation, erased.

Still, Duval-Carrié smiled, because in the end, the conversation was so loud that Louverture could no longer be ignored. “They gave him more importance by trying to remove him.”

This is the thing about erasure, and about the people who resist it: when you try to remove someone, something, a piece of archive, a story, a history even from the record, you remind the world that there was something there. You create a gap, but in the end, you make that gap visible.

And at some point, one way or another, someone is looking up the original, notices the gap, calls out and asks: What happened to the rider of the horse?

That is what I admire in Duval-Carrié’s practice: He is not reacting to the erasure. He is making it structurally impossible, by delving into so many layers of history, so much complexity, so much beauty, for anyone to flatten or erase or simplify Haiti.

“Jouer au Paysan”

In Haiti, elitism often creates an unspoken rift between those who privilege middle to upper class artists painting only the contemporary, and those artists who engage with the pastoral Haiti, the countryside and raw, rural scenes with farmers, mountains and jungle scenes, or the mythical Vodou rituals of the practitioners and the initiated.

However, those very artists are the ones Edouard Duval-Carrié emulates: those artists belonging to the first generation of Haitian painters, luminaries like Rigaud Benoit and Salnave Philippe-Auguste, the ones painting the real Haiti: its flora and fauna, its rich textures and its complex customs and traditions depicted on canvas through perfect colors. They painted the Haiti Duval-Carrié knows, where he was born in 1954 and fell in love with art before his family fled the dictatorship of Papa Doc.

In fact, as we talk, he points to a painting he just acquired by Philippe-Auguste, a striking jungle scene with Adam and Eve in the rich, colorful foliage among animals. “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s beautiful!” His voice sizzles with pride and admiration.

He spent his career emulating these great artists and embracing that style, incorporating it into his own work from his very early beginning as a painter.

In fact, Duval-Carrié never forgot the criticism he received of his very first exhibition in Haiti, when a radio host who lived next door attended the opening and called him, on air the next morning, a little bourgeois kid “qui joue au paysan.”

“Here I was emulating these guys and he was like, I was playing at them, but I could never be them, you know? I was so mad.”

This critique stayed with him even after he attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. But still, in his heart, always, he carried a love for what he valued as true Haitian art.

And this accusation of him playing at the paysan would not deter him. Instead of reinventing himself to fit expectations, Duval-Carrié transformed it into a suit of armor by staying his course, embracing his identity and love for Haitian art naïf, and letting decades of his work speak for itself.

“I wore this little suit like a peasant since the beginning, and there’s no reason for me to change at this point, you know? I’ve already made it, I’ve already set my pace, and I don’t have any issues with it.”

And right on time to prove his point, Edouard Duval-Carrié is now packing for Venice, exited to reveal a work that will encapsulate much of his practice, blending history, spirituality and politics in his traditional didactic signature. Viewers can expect an interdisciplinary presentation with a blended use of materials, piquing curiosity and inviting reflection.

Correcting the Record

In his practice, Duval-Carrié is more concerned with creating for his audience, which is first and foremost the Haitian people. Then, his class. And then, the world.

He sees himself as an artist who delves into research and spends time investigating history, and gives it new meaning in the incandescent sceneries he creates.

When I hear him say this, there is a moment of clarity for me as a writer of Corrective Historical Fiction™. Because my work attempts to put back what has been taken out of the record, to restore complexity to people who have been flattened by time or by someone else’s telling.

“[…] The Haitian revolution took the whole concept of democracy and brought it to levels that nobody else has reached. The Haitians were thinking about a colorless, classless society, best constitution in the world. Yes. And if you don’t get that, you don’t realize how important Haiti is. I love that!”

What Duval-Carrié teaches me in particular, sitting across from me that afternoon, is this: The response to flattening or simplification or erasure coming from others is not argument. It is production. You make the work. You keep making the work. And eventually, the work speaks for itself, all the way to Venice.

As we near the end of our conversation, he tells me what he advises young Haitian artists: “Stand your course. You will get there if you are true to your nation, to the beliefs of what Haitians believe in. Because you have an understanding of all the problems that there were — and what Haiti was trying to resolve, against all odds.”

I am a novelist. I write the stories that got left out. I spend a great deal of my life asking why the record looks the way it does, why the narrative is always dominated by others, why some voices are left out of conversations, and why the telling gets distorted or completely left out.

I spend years researching and writing in order to correct that record, even if in the form of fiction, because fiction is where people pay attention. Just like art is where people pay attention.

Beauty is where people pay attention.

In Édouard Duval-Carrié’s practice, the work is to research and question and investigate, to put Haiti’s beauty and complexity in plain view on an international scale for all eyes to see, ultimately building a visual counter-archive so dense and layered that the single story, eventually, simply cannot hold.

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I recently taught my recurring virtual workshop with the Western University of New Mexico’s English Department. Sin Fonteras is a Creative Writing Project that brings students from different backgrounds around Professor and Sixth Silver City Poet Laureate Heather Frankland’s table for a series of workshops with published authors in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and this year, we delved into the narrative power of the unsaid.

I wanted to explore this because the more I read, the more I become infatuated with good writing and the more I realize that the best writers are the ones who know how to say the most by saying less. Recently, I came across two novels that did this spectacularly and I used both texts to support the workshop. I shared those texts with the students ahead of time and we read them together in class. Those texts are included here for my paid subscribers.

This is your cue to subscribe if you don’t already!

Because there is a moment in almost every workshop I teach when something clicks — not loudly, but the way a key turns in a lock. Someone reads a passage aloud, and the room goes quiet in a particular way. Not the quiet of confusion or politeness. The quiet of recognition. The quiet that means: I felt that, and I didn’t know why, and now I’m starting to understand.

That quiet is usually caused by something the writer didn’t say.

This essay is about that. About the craft of the unsaid — how writers create the most charged, most felt moments in fiction not through declaration but through restraint, indirection, and strategic silence. And about what I’ve come to think of as the generative pressure of borders: the way that limits — cultural, linguistic, racial, geographic — don’t just constrain what characters can say, but create the very conditions that make subtext possible.

The texts I referenced earlier that are included here are from two novels that have been living rent-free in my head: Bushra Rehman’s Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion and Jaquira Díaz’s This Is the Only Kingdom. Both are set partly in the 1980s. Both center communities where identity and survival depend on what goes unsaid. Both are, in their very different ways, masterclasses in silence.

And then we’ll write.

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I was in conversation with a brilliant group of students the other day. They were dual-enrollment students, part of a literary club, and it’s always interesting to talk to them because it’s like being in a room with young geniuses whose faces you cannot read. What do they think of you and the wisdom you try to share with them? Are they actually listening to you? Are they bored? Do they even take you seriously?

They do. They just don’t have to show it. That’s how you know they’re smart.

They’re not here to impress anyone but themselves.

But someone in that group asked me a question about my writing process: Do I cast my characters the way a screenwriter would when writing for a film? And if so, who do I see playing the characters in Kingdom of No Tomorrow?

I had to think about that one for a second. Because this is a question that has come up quite a lot with this novel ever since it hit the shelves. Even the book reviews have noted the cinematic feel with which it is written, and for that, I make zero apology. There is a screenwriter in me waiting to burst out, and when I wrote my first novel, its original form was actually a screenplay. I have an enormous amount of fun writing for the silver screen.

And yet, I have found a kind of comfort in the novel because it allows me to expand on the story, to go deeper in backstories, in thoughts, in emotions, in side stories and back alleys, in secondary characters and other dimensions and layers that make a novel heftier, fleshier, more robust. I keep coming back to it like it’s my home and I can’t let go of that security blanket.

But yes. When I write my novel, in my head I am writing it as if I am writing a film. And therefore, I am casting my characters. It motivates me, it helps me see them before me, and now they are real people with real features, real demeanors, real problems, real mannerisms, and real accents, and I feel more grounded.

I’m sharing this because it gives me fuel to write, and if you are reading this as a writer, I think you either already do this yourself or you’ve thought of doing it. If you don’t do this already do it; by all means, take this as your sign: you should cast your characters.

Here’s how I actually use casting in my own work—and how you can apply it immediately to your novel.

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I was always taught women should be quiet.

From a young age, I was told that little girls shouldn’t be heard, so I learned to swallow my true feelings, especially my rage.

That is my confession to you, my reader, today. And I confess it on the eve of Valentine’s Day as a way of releasing this into the ether in the same way one would blow on a birthday candle and make a wish.

My wish is to read and write more about women who dare to voice their feelings. Their rage. Their fears. Their concerns. Their alarm. I want to hear from them more, especially in a world where patriarchy (and the women it co-opts to do its bidding) tells them their bodies and their humanity matter less than the Dow Jones or the S&P500.

And because we are on the eve of a celebration of love, I want to hear more about women who dare to confess their love.

This is one thing I was also taught, that in heterosexual relationships, men are the ones who do the courting, that they buy the flowers, initiate the dates, and everything else. And the woman should let herself be romanced, act demure. smile, be a lady, and let him take charge.

However, as I grew older, I watched in amazement as the women in my entourage pushed against those boundaries. My mother was the antithesis of a trad wife (not to knock a woman who chooses this lifestyle). However, she worked, choosing a profession of caring and nurturing, and became a head nurse at a hospital, where she helped women give birth.

I watched my female teachers and professors engage in debates and nail men’s mouths shut with their intellect. In a culture that taught me to embroider and cook and trained me to be a good future wife to some future unknown husband, I had the fortune of living with a father who passed me his French magazines so I could read about Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and who bought me memoirs by Simone de Beauvoir.

Today, as a writer, I am looking for the women who fight like hell to protect their own and who aren’t afraid to be the first to tell a man how they feel. Even when their feelings aren’t reciprocated. Even when the door slams in their face. Even when they are rejected, maligned, persecuted, shamed, forgotten, erased, embarrassed, and chastized for daring to speak their feelings.

I want to write more women like my friend K., who shocked me, in our early twenties, by admitting that she asked men out on dates. She didn’t mind telling them exactly how she felt about them. And I always listened in a state of panic. I remember my own judgment at the time. Why would you do this? Aren’t you afraid of being rejected? Aren’t you worried about the shame that comes with everyone knowing you asked him out? But no, she wasn’t. It was clear this was never a concern for her.

To me, that was fearlessness. That was bravery. That took cojones.

And to be honest, the reason why I want to write more women like these is because I still have a lot of work to do in terms of voicing my emotions. Lately, I’ve learned a lot about the possible consequences for sharing and being vulnerable. I know that such bold decisions can backfire. But my goal is to not spend the rest of my life with my head in the sand. My aspiration is to be more daring.

I have learned from these ballsy women that I can break some rules. That the heart is an honest organ worth fighting for, worth laying bare. That women sometimes must take risks, throw caution to the wind, and tell the object of their affection how they feel, tell a man they love him, even if down the line it turns out he isn’t worth the effort.

There is no shame in the trying. There is no shame in having an overstock of love and a need to set it down somewhere, no shame in picking a wobbly table that later collapses under the weight of it all. The women with an abundance of love to give are the ones we should be looking for. They are where the love resides. They will be the ones to take us home.

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It’s strange how a book can revisit you.
I picked up The House on Mango Street again recently, thinking I was just brushing up on a classic for the book club. But what I found inside was more of a delicious little surprise.

It felt like carrying a juicy mango or peach in your picnic basket, saving it for that moment when you’re finally alone under the perfect tree, in the shade, ready to get comfortable with your book. You unwrap your fruit, hold it in the sunlight, slice off a piece, and take that first delicious bite.

Can you picture it? That little moment of joy — a reminder that sometimes, goodness comes in small bites or small pieces?

When Sandra Cisneros wrote The House on Mango Street, I wonder if she knew that was what she was actually doing.

I wonder if she was aware she was gifting writers a new map. A new way of doing things. A new shape.

A shape that says: you don’t have to follow their rules. You don’t have to write a memoir or a novel the way they said you should. You can invent a book and write it in a shape that validates your story — even if it rejects a conventional arc.

Each vignette in this book holds the weight of memory and resists the burden of plot. Which I thought might be difficult for a writer like me — a plotter, someone obsessed with storyline and structure.

But The House on Mango Street isn’t preoccupied with cause and effect. It simply is. And in that being, something radical happens:

It liberates the writer.

The Vignette as Liberation

I’ve been deep in a novel lately, and as you know, the work is dense. Heavy. Structured like a cathedral (pardon the Raymond Carver pun, but it’s true) — it needs support beams, columns, symmetry. A novel, for the most part, is architecture.

But some novels can be written, as we just said, in vignettes. And those are like water. Or like wind. They come when they want, and they slip through the cracks.

When I read Cisneros again, I remembered: we don’t always have to build the story.

Sometimes, we can gather it. Or let it arrive in pieces.

Another contemporary author who did something similar is Jonathan Escoffery. His novel, If I Survive You, was also a collection of vignettes. They were short stories, yes, but held together by a loose yet powerful thread: the ensemble of characters, the family dynamics — constants, even as each story followed a different person.

But letting a story come to you in fragments, like Cisneros does, is incredibly liberating. It releases the pressure of having to force everything into a storyline. It’s a kind of freedom that’s especially helpful when you’re feeling stuck.

If you’re overwhelmed by where to start or how to end — maybe this is the permission you need too: you can write the moment, not the masterpiece. You can write the feeling, not the frame.

This Is Also About Memory

The vignette is a sacred form for those of us who grew up with oral histories, fractured archives, and stories that come to us in fragments — family memories, whispered truths, half-translated dreams.

The vignette honors this.

You don’t need to prove your mastery through structure.
You don’t need to conquer time or force a resolution.
You can write a page that feels, and that feeling is a whole world.

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I’m writing again—and it feels amazing.

I’ve been writing in spurts, and I’m digging it. I write whenever I can. Usually in the mornings, but if the window opens in the late morning or afternoon, I’ll take it. What matters is that the fuse is lit and I’m cooking with gas. I’m in the story and it’s working. I’m going with what I have. I’m even leaving myself comments in the margins with questions I need to follow up on.

I can’t wait for research anymore. I have to keep moving.

But first, I want to explain why it’s taken me so long to write a Substack this month.

January Was a Storm

Needless to say, January was off to a rough start. We did not want to start our new year like this, but my God—so much has happened in world affairs that I’ve felt crushed. I don’t know about you, but I needed a minute to find my footing. For a moment there, I was nervous.

The question became: How do we do this?
How do we move forward with all of what’s happening?
Is there even a point?
What’s to say any of this matters if…?

I went down a rabbit hole of what ifs. It was not good.

Not good at all.

My Return to Analog

Then I did something I should have done long ago. I returned to a more analog way of life—just as the buzzword itself started trending. Magically, as we entered 2026, every social media influencer started to tout the idea of “disconnecting from the digital world” or moving to a more “analog” lifestyle.

Yes.
This was always the answer, wasn’t it?

I’ve been caught in this vacuum of digital noise, and it’s incredibly toxic to the human psyche. As if we weren’t already caught up in consumerism 24/7, we are now plugged into social media, which has an incredible hold on our feelings and emotions. Add to this the surge of AI-generated material (still largely unregulated), and the endless stream of doom-laden headlines—and you have a recipe for complete societal emotional collapse.

At least I foresee this for myself.

So I started to craft a plan—not a resolution—to make sense of 2026. Something grounded. Something real. Here’s what that looks like so far.

My Analog Toolkit for 2026

1. Spending less time scrolling.
This is the top challenge for a lot of us, which proves how addictive the system really is. I remind myself every time I pick up the phone: put. it. down. HARD TO DO. But then I realize I do this 148 times a day. That’s a compulsion. That’s an addiction.

Some of my friends “offload” Instagram. Others only use a flip phone. There is no perfect solution. But each of us must try something.

2. Establishing a sacred sleep routine.
No more Internet or phone after 10 pm. I’ve set a new rhythm:

• Diffuser on

• Essential oils in the air

• Skin care

• A little journaling

• Reading a real book

• White noise to close the day

It works BUT it’s hard. I admit this is still a work in progress for me but I must persist.

3. Reading more.
I fell off the reading wagon at the end of 2025. I think the way world affairs escalated robbed me of focus. I was in panic mode—building, bracing, coping—and I couldn’t find it in me to open a book and seek refuge.

But books have always been my escape. They do what movies and TV cannot: they quietly activate our imagination and offer refuge.

That’s why I’m kicking off this year with books. For my book club right now, I just finished re-reading The House on Mango Street via Bookshop.org, a classic brought back by the NEA Big Read. It’s short, accessible, and a perfect re-entry for anyone trying to fall in love with reading again.

So Why Am I Telling You This?

Because if you’re a writer, a dreamer, a sensitive human being navigating the noise—you are not alone.

This is not just about journaling and scented oils. This is about saving our sanity—so we can create the work that sustains us and uplifts others.

There are so many reasons to go quiet right now. But that’s exactly what they want. To silence us, the artists and writers and poets and thinkers.

There are even more reasons to keep the fire lit.

I’m writing again. I’m reclaiming that joy. It is my duty, even when it’s hard.

Tell Me in the Comments:

What are you reclaiming this season?
A practice? A ritual? A forgotten joy?
I want to hear from you. Let’s build a space of return, together.

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Everyone’s sharing an obligatory year-in-review before the clock strikes midnight. So I’ll keep mine simple: it’s full of gratitude.

And I’m not just being sentimental when I say this—I am truly, deeply grateful for you. For the readers who’ve taken this journey with me as I explored the intersections of reading, writing, thinking, traveling for book opportunities, researching culture and tradition, and challenging how I relate to storytelling and personal growth.

I’m always mindful of how I can bring you value through this Substack—not treat it like a stage where I listen to myself talk. This space has kept me centered, especially in a world that often feels like it’s burning down around us. And you’ve allowed me to name that plainly. For this, I’m thankful.

Without diving too deeply into the political and economic bleakness that looms over us daily, I’ve managed to throw myself into my work and share what grounds me. And if you’re also a writer, I hope some of those insights helped you stay afloat. Because without a creative outlet, without writing, we can drown.

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What I See Coming

Let me be blunt: I’m nervous about what’s ahead. I hope I’m wrong—but I’m not sure that I am.

North America didn’t begin as “the good guy,” and I don’t think we can keep expecting it to save the world. That was always the mistake: assuming it could, or should.

And so, the burden—no, the call—will fall even more on artists and writers to be the moral compass. The ones who hold the ship together while everything else sinks. Our legacy, our work—our books, paintings, essays, and stories—must illuminate the path forward. It must soothe, reveal, protest, and reflect. That’s the work.

And yet, I’m afraid for the African continent—especially the nations of the Sahel alliance. Countries like Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso are resisting imperialism and reclaiming sovereignty under leaders like Abdourahamane Tchiani, Assimi Goïta, and Ibrahim Traoré. These men are already targets.

And we’ll soon realize this is part of the reason behind the U.S. military presence in Nigeria.

This matters to me deeply—as someone who wrote a novel about the Black Panther Party, as someone who understands the cost of speaking out against empire.

Just recently, the Sahel nations responded to the latest U.S. travel ban by imposing one of their own: American citizens are now restricted from entering. I may never get to witness a Gerewol ceremony in Niger, or photograph the Tiebele mud huts of Burkina Faso, or stand before the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali. And I understand why. I respect it. These nations refuse to be disrespected, diminished, or used.

I know that feeling—coming from Haiti, a country constantly talked down to, dismissed, misunderstood.

What Keeps Me Going

But even in the darkness, I see light.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? That we need the dark to recognize the light. Every writer, artist, educator, visionary, climate activist, inventor, and humanist out there creating something necessary—that’s a spark. The real question becomes: how do we protect that spark?

That is the charge for 2026. The resolution, if we must call it that.

I don’t normally do resolutions. But I do make a list every year, à la Octavia Butler. I write down what I want to manifest—and, remarkably, it works.

In 2025, my list was simple:
- Become a better literary citizen.
- Share my novel widely.
- Show up at festivals, campuses, and classrooms.
- Teach workshops.
- Start a Substack (✔️ hello!).
- Install a Little Free Library in my neighborhood.
(My HOA is still dragging its feet—but at least they approved a location by the common mailbox. So, progress!)

And in 2026?

I want to write books I didn’t think I’d write. Nonfiction. Books about culture and tradition.
I want to research more, understand the world better, love it more fully.
I want to make new friends.
Write novels, poems, folktales.
And if I can’t do it all—I want to do at least most of it.

I can’t control time. I don’t know how much of it I have left on this earth. But I hope it’s enough to share what’s in my head and in my heart. And when it’s all said and done, I hope that what remains is the work—the stories.

A Story I’ve Been Holding

Speaking of stories: there’s one I’ve been meaning to share with you. A personal essay I’ve held close for months, debating whether to publish it here or elsewhere.

But this—right here—feels like the place. And now feels like the right time.

It’s an essay about grief. About the first person I ever idolized. A person I loved deeply. The first person whose death taught me the meaning of legacy.

I hope it doesn’t dampen your new year. I hope, instead, that it uplifts you—and reminds you to ask:

What do I hope to leave behind?
Power? Wealth?
Or kindness?

Maybe I’m a romantic, but I think it’s the latter.
You tell me in the comments.

Happy New Year, readers. ❤️

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When I was growing up in Haiti, December was a time to experience Christmas the way Haitians see it. One of my favorite sights on the street was the men and women selling Bab Panyòl (Spanish Beard)—bundles of Spanish moss to line the base of Christmas trees and nativity scenes. But perhaps my all-time favorite was the appearance of fanals.

Fanals are traditional paper lanterns made in the shape of a house. When my father’s car drove up the hill on Route Bourdon, we’d see a multitude of them lit at dusk, amber flames of candles glowing bright orange inside the bellies of those white paper homes.

The oral history of the fanal tells us they were brought to Haiti from West Africa and later merged with Christian traditions around the 19th century. According to Alphonse Piard—who goes by the artist name Alpi—free people of color would have miniature replicas of their homes made at Christmas to announce their social status. They’d light them from within and carry them up the hills to church.

The tradition still exists in parts of Africa and even Brazil. In Haiti, it has transformed. Fanals now belong to everyone. And during Christmas, they are lit through the New Year before being let go. Some people even burn them.

When I heard that part—the burning—I immediately wondered about symbolism. There had to be meaning in this, right? Could it be a metaphor for letting go of the past and starting anew?

Because how else do you find the courage to burn something you created with such love, unless it’s to reinvent it—make it threefold, ten times better than the first? Artists are always eager to surpass their last masterpiece, I suppose. I imagine the craft artisans who make these carefully sculpted houses with lattice windows, gingerbread roofs, and wraparound verandas, might also want to improve their art each time. So perhaps burning a fanal after Christmas offers a new beginning, a chance to outdo the first one and all the others around it.

There’s a beautiful metaphor in there. You can feel it, can’t you? It’s storytelling for anyone seeking to start fresh, to leave the past behind. Every year, we do this: set New Year’s resolutions, cast away the old. I do it too. In fact, I love setting new intentions.

But the question that always lingers in my mind is about discipline: Do you have IT?
Do you have the stamina to carry your promise into the New Year and beyond—to wake up each day and do the work until it’s polished, until you can look into the blade of your own life and make eye contact with yourself? Can you nod and greet yourself with confidence?

I hope you’re still with me, because if you are, you’ve probably realized that this essay isn’t only about the Haitian tradition of paper lanterns being burned to make way for new ones.

This is an essay about renewing—not just yourself, but your writing.
It’s a craft talk about rewriting. Revising. Redrafting.

It’s about the labor we writers—and artists—undertake each time we try to create something new. Work that holds together. Work that makes sense, that catches the eye, that illuminates a reader—lighting their path in the dark as they walk uphill seeking their own blessing.

And that uphill journey? It’s not easy.
We want to give up. We fall into negative self-talk:
“No one wants to read my stories.”
“Who cares what I have to say?”
“Am I even a good writer?”

But I’m telling you: there’s only one way I, the writer, can find out.

I write the draft again.

I know—trust me—I know how anxiety-inducing it is, especially when the writing was hard-won. But there’s joy in the process if you can slow down enough to find it.

Let go of the last draft. It will be okay. You know the story now.
That first draft was you working through it—telling it to yourself, laying the foundation.
Now you get to reinvent it and make it better.
Build upon it. Make it solid. You’ve already told the story to yourself. Now you get to tell it for real.

I remind myself of this even when I lose a document on my laptop. The loss stings, yes. But also—how lucky am I? I get to write it again.

Even when it hurts to kill your darlings, as we say in the writing business, slay them knowing you’re making space to begin again.

Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms at least 47 times before he got it right. Let that sink in.

So I ask Alpi again—what does it mean, this burning of the fanals? Might it symbolize something? A resolution? A letting go?

But he laughs.

“I wish it were that romantic,” he says. “But really, the answer is more practical. The artists need to make more business, so they have to start over.”

Simple as that. Just… starting over.

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I’m back! I’ve been quiet for a bit because it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. Between book festivals and speaking engagements and research, I’ve put writing on pause, promising myself I would return with some good stuff. And as luck would have it, that happens to be right on holiday season.

What do writers, readers and those in between need and crave at the moment as we enter the holidays and the world is literally burning all around us? It definitely feels to me as if consumerism, as if the need to make a list of material wants, is superfluous.

It’s a luxury at the moment, to crave a candle warmer for our scented candles, or a pair of cozy slippers, while just a block away from me, at least once a day, landscape vehicles are being pulled over by ICE agents scanning for immigrants to detain. Yesterday, I was at a party for my daughter where a parent told m e her new alarm clock is now Border Patrol helicopters in the morning, before dawn, searching the area. Around us, we see oppression, extremism, lawlessness, impunity, murder, burnings, erasure.

And yet, we’re still gathering with our loved ones and sharing presents to keep a sense of normalcy.

Some people do it because those narratives don’t mean much, especially if they don’t affect them directly.

But some of us do these things because we must go on somehow, keep our hope alive so that we can get up and continue doing our part the next day. We must make memories. And we must create moments that generate joy in any form, because joy carries us forward. Joy is a necessary fuel.

I’ve been thinking about the meaning of the things I would want in my life if I were making a wish list. Lately, I find that I crave the useful and the functional—especially when I’m on the go with books, speaking gigs, or long writing sessions. These essentials are some of the things I think we can all use right now, to enlighten us, exand our horizons, deepen our understanding (books!), but also the things we can use now to bring us joy and comfort, to make our lives easier.

These are things I use when at home with my kids, when I travel for book festivals, when I sit on panels, when I give a talk, or when I’m sitting to write through a deadline. I’m also listing really great things I’ve been gifted. They’d make great gifts if you’re looking to make a writer or word lover in your life happy for the holidays, or if just want to treat yourself to some thoughtful, on-brand tools that make the work feel sacred.

Please note that the links that follow are indeed affiliate links and as such, they contain tracking via Rakuten, Bookshop, or brand partnerships I’ve joined. That means if you shop using these links, you’re supporting my work and writing practice at no extra cost to you. Thank you for keeping this corner of the internet creative and thriving.

Writing + Desk Rituals (For the Cozy Season)

• A Lap Desk from the Ergomi Store, which will allow you to write from one room to another. I’ve taken to write out of my arm chair and this is perfect for that cozy writing time, just me and my laptop literally on my lap.

• My Current Favorite Pen – You’ll pry it from my inky fingers. Fountain pen lovers, trust me. This was a gift from a friend and it glides beautifully, especially on the right paper.

• Earplugs for Deep Focus – I got these when my daughter became a toddler, which oddly enough coincided with the time I started to learn the meaning of the word “overstimulated.” These are incredibly effective at blocking sound, allowing you to withdraw deep within and do the work while still being able to hear your name being called. It reduces sound, without cancelling it completely. It’s a game-changer for working at cafés if you’re into that, or in co-working spots.

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  For the Readers

• The Artist’s Way - I’ve read some good ones this year and this one was introduced to me for the first time, even though it just celebrated its 30 years on the market. It is a blueprint for how to live as an artist, and writers will absolutely benefit from Julia Cameron’s insight.

• Magnetic bookmarks - Those past few years I’ve received bookmarks as part of packages that felt special. One magnetic bookmark had my nitial on it, and also one shaped like a gold feather with a dangling crystal. The more whimsical, the more enjoyable the reading experience. I love getting back to a bookmark and experiencing the satisfaction of having actually put my bookmark to use!

• Reading Journals - This is a new concept to me, that I have to track what I read in this organized manner. And I like it. Because Lord knows I could use some method of archiving quotes, lines, research, thoughts about a passage in a book, and also I could use a good way of keeping track of what I read. Ask me what I’ve read this year: I would struggle to remember, and yet I read quite a bit. What a gift for a book lover!

Bonus: If you’re still shopping for gifts, I keep a short list of cozy finds, beautiful desk supplies, and reading accessories I love on my Benable .

What’s your must-have for a winter writing/reading session?
Reply in the comments—or tag me on IG or TikTok with your favorite author rituals.

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I was recently asked who taught me be a writer, and my answer is that it took a whole village of parents, teachers, friends who gave me those life-changing novels.

But lately, I remind myself to acknowledge my grandfather who taught me the first, underrated skill of writing: listening.

My grandfather was the first storyteller I ever really knew. He was what West Africans refer to as a griot, a preserver of oral stories, passing on the tradition to me. And I am biased of course when I say he was the best. But he was good. Not good just in delivery alone, but good in his ability to remember.

This is what we undervalue in the oral tradition of storytelling: it is more than just entertainment. It is a repository for culture, and values, but it is also a tool for sharpening the memory. Every single story is told about the same characters, in the same way with slight variations accepted, and with the same lessons. They are committed to memory, and my grandfather knew how to memorize them the same way he memorized history passages from textbooks.

I would sit at his feet, the warm Haitian afternoons thick with sounds of the neighborhood: vendors, donkeys and mules braying, roosters and hens and guinea fowls clucking about, children’s laughter and crackling fires in the evening. I would beg, and beg all day for stories, and he made me wait. It’s part of the fun, you see. The adults enjoy being begged, because the stories are not just jokes. They’re treasures.

He would bring me buckets and basins full of mangoes and sugar cane from his crops and I would position myself on a straw mat on the floor. He would sit on a chair. And I would listen as he told stories of Bouki and Malice—tricksters and opportunists whose wit and mischief could outsmart kings and spirits alike. And he always started, as tradition demands, with call and response.

“Krik?”

“Krak!”

This is the knock on the door of storytelling, how the griot makes sure you are listening, you are ready. My grandfather’s stories were rich with imagery, moral lessons, and vocabulary that I, a young city slicker, was unfamiliar with. I distinctly remember him telling me a story about Bouki and his horse.

“Epi, Bouki sele chwal la!”

I could not figure out, for the life of me, what sele meant. Even though I spoke the language, the brand of Creole I was familiar with was still colonized, so much that that I did not know the true name of things until I returned to the country with my parents and my father had to teach me the definition for words we never use in the city. I had to learn that when we spoke of the kanari, we didn’t mean a bird, but we meant the clay jug in his kitchen that kept the water cool like a refrigerator.

So it took us a while to realize that I had sele wrong, that it didn’t mean to “salt” a horse — why on earth would you salt a horse anyway? You wouldn’t salt a horse! No, he meant to “saddle” a horse.

Through the oral tradition, I was taught to listen not only to what was said, but to what was left unsaid, what was said differently, what was said beautifully or poetically, using terms that were otherworldly, words that were vivid and rich and new.

This is how I learned storytelling, when I think about it. Not from a book, not from a diagram, but from inheritance.

Years later, I would sit in university classrooms and learn about Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Shape of a Story.” And though I admired the clarity of their graphs and arcs, something in me today resists the conventions of western storytelling as absolute.

Because sure, the hero has a journey, and Vonnegut’s chart does follow beautiful curves, but Black, Caribbean, Indigenous, diasporic storytellers have also mastered rhythm in poetry and in verse for centuries. We have myth and magic, migration and memory.

We have storytellers, griots, who carried history in their memory, in their voices, in their heads, not their notebooks. Here is what I mean:

In Haitian paintings, I have always been fascinated with the naive art that depicts animals in the jungle: leopards, giraffes, tigers and lions hiding in the bush. When I was young, I couldn’t understand how or why a people living on a Caribbean island was so obsessed with the recreation of animals you’d see on safari.

Until I ask myself: what if these paintings are conjuring ancient images from memory? What if centuries after the TransAtlantic slave trade, we are here remembering what our landscape looked like back home where our tribes still coexist with zebras and elephants? Of course, it’s also possible that these are actual biblical references (Garden of Eden scenes featuring Adam and Even hidden in the foliage). But what if?

Ask a Haitian woman to give you a tutorial on wrapping her hair in a turban. She doesn’t need to watch a YouTube video for this. Her hands just know what to do, mostly because we have grown up surrounded with mothers wearing headwraps and turbans, but ancestral memory carries here too where our great, great grandmother and aunts wrapped fabric around their heads before starting their day.

Even after we crossed the door of no return, and traveled through seas, we carried memory with us. We needed a way to remember who we are and where we come from. Memory must be sharpened, always, like a blade against whetstone. Telling stories around the fire is how we preserve memory.

And our stories weren’t bound by rules. Where they came from, our stories wandered, sang, circled and repeated themselves, extended themselves into teachable moments, explained the world to us and the origin of things. They remembered. If you don’t believe me, go read Amos Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drinkard or Ben Okri’s A Famished Road.

In order to sharpen my memory and help preserve these stories so that I can pass them on as the tradition demands, I’ve begun to spend time lately with my friend, folklorist Liliane Nerette Louis. Together, we discuss folk medicine, and we exchange stories. I try to take notes when we meet, but mostly, she tries to get me to practice so I can remember how to tell these stories to my children, and later on, to an audience.

Liliane is a master storyteller and published author of Krik? Krak! When Night Falls and Other Stories (now out of print). She is a regular participant at the Florida Folklife Festival, and is in the process of launching the Haitian Folklife Society. At eighty-nine years old, she has built a name for herself in cultivating the art of Haitian cooking, healing through natural remedies, and sharing stories.

In this excerpt below, listen to Liliane help me through the process of remembering stories I no longer know how to tell.

To decolonize storytelling is to remember that narrative doesn’t only belong to the West. We can be writers without having read Dostoevsky or Austen or Tostoy. Stories belong to everyone and they’ve been told since the first caveman drew them on a wall of a cave. Narratives live in the drum, in the song, in the oral pulse of people around the world who understand that story is not always a line, but sometimes a circle.

When I write now, I still hear my grandfather’s voice, soft, almost like a hum, like cotton. His rhythm reminds me that storytelling is really about survival of generations through story, after story, after story. One Krik? Krak at a time, we keep us going.

So let’s sharpen memory and practice ways in which we can tell stories by relying on our sense of hearing and listening.

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I first started going to book festivals years ago in Miami. I am still a Miami Book Fair devotee. Everyone should attend a book festival anywere, once in their life.

Because book festivals is where you go to be reminded that we are still humans, thinking beings seeking connection and adventure, and stories, and intellectual stimulation, and this year especially, if you’re looking to feel alive again, and looking to reignite your passion and imagination for stories and ideas, GO.

There is something sacred in the act of showing up and you will realize this immediately. The energy you catch at a book festival, as a book lover or an emerging writer, is unmatched.

If you are intimidated, or if you think you have to be someone: a published author, a panelist, or a big name, you must reconsider your thoughts around this. Because here’s the truth — you don’t need a fancy badge to belong. If you love stories, you already do.

I just came back from the Texas Book Festival and I can tell you first hand: these aren’t just literary events — they’re pilgrimage sites. For writers, they’re fuel stations. For readers, they’re playgrounds. And for all of us? They’re living proof that the written word still moves people.

Whether you’re going to learn, to launch, or just to listen — here’s my heartfelt, lived-in advice:

What to Pack

• Comfortable shoes — I cannot stress this enough: this isn’t the time for heels or flip flops, even when you have fabulous arches. You need comfort and my recommendation, if even if you are an author on a panel and you need to rock a banging outfit, is to show yourself some love and respect. I usually trust my Brooks Adrenalines running shoes with added insoles (I thought I could do different this time by trying newer, more stylish shoes and I immediately regretted this decision). Don’t make the same mistake I made!

• A fanny pack (really!) — I don’t really recommend a tote bag because those are available everywhere at any festival, especially if you are an invited writer. But if you are going to bring a bag, bring one that is large and sturdy for books, water, swag, and snacks. A backpack isn’t a bad idea.

• Snacks — Good protein, because although there is food, you will need to refuel at times, especially during a panel when you get brain fog (I like plantain chips and trail mix with a bit of chocolate for a bit of sugar).

• A refillable water bottle — you’ll do more walking than you think and you don’t want to be dehydrated. The Texas Book Festival was fantastic in providing a water station which comes in handy on hot days.

• A light sweater — A/C is brutal in panel rooms, and for afternoons when the temperature drops outside.

• A notebook + pen — because inspiration doesn’t care where you are, and during a good panel you will want want to grab those good quotes from your favorite writer and write them down!

What to Buy

• A book by a local author — support the hometown heroes if you can. They will appreciate you showing up and they will feel encouraged in the work they do.

• A signed copy by someone you admire — talk to them, they’re human. And they want to hear from you. As an author, sitting there not signing book is demoralizing, but at least talking to readers helps. The best part for me was trackign down Jerry Craft, one of my son’s favorite author/illustrator, and getting him to sign his book. My son was thrilled and felt really special! It’s also a great time to get a personalized gift for a reader.

• Something from the kids’ tent, even if you don’t have kids — it’s where the joy lives. I get such a surge of energy just browsing through the children’s tent, picking up the books, and seeing the glow in the kids’ eyes as they purchase books with their parents. It’s a great place to buy gifts for those nieces and nephews in your life (that’s why I’m known in my family as the Book Auntie).

  Video: Texas Book Festival - Children’s Tent, Nov. 9, 2025

Who to Meet

• Authors you love. Aask good questions you’ve been wanting to ask, don’t be shy about it. Authors do write for YOU, even when they say they don’t. You are the audience, so they do want you to be interested and curious about their work and their process.

• Fellow readers waiting in line — start with “What are you reading?” I find that fellow readers make better conversation, because at least you have a love of books in common!

• Small press folks or indie booksellers — they remember your name, and it’s a good way to make connections and you test the waters if you’re just putting yourself out there as a serious writer.

• Panel moderators — these are the unsung heroes of literary events, and often deeply connected in the lit world. They have a good pulse on the audience and on the authors, so they’re at an interesting intersection where they can share insight on both sides.

What No One Tells You

• You don’t have to do everything. Pick your panels like you pick books: go where your curiosity leads. Don’t feel pressured. This should be about enjoyment!

• Festival fatigue is real — hydrate, sit, breathe. Don’t overwork yourself to the point of overwhelm.

• The real magic happens between panels: over coffee, under tents, in spontaneous conversations. Remember to savor those moments.

• If you’re an invited author, don’t hesitate to join the off-site events as well. Community building often happens at the bars, cafes, restaurants, rooftop lounges and places where the readings and parties are happening.

• Find your inspiration: sometimes, a poetry reading or a conversation among fiction authors can be an opportunity for you to suddenly find that spark you’ve been looking for. Which is why you should always have a notebook and pen with you. You just never know when and where this might happen!

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  If you’ve never been to a book festival, let this be your sign that this should be the year you make that commitment. And if you’re an emerging writer: show up anyway. Your story belongs here.

• NEXT STOP: Miami Book Fair, November 22-23. You can download your guide and plan your visit ahead of time. I will be there on panels both days, and I hope to see you there! Come say hi, get your book signed, meet other authors, eat some amazing food, bring your families, buy books, make new friends and more!

  

  What’s the best book event you’ve ever attended? Tell me in the comments — or tag a friend who needs to come with you to the next one.

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Disclosure: Some of the links in this essay are affiliate links through Bookshop.org. If you choose to make a purchase through them, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. As always, I only recommend books and products I personally believe in.

Writing grief can be so difficult that I spend a lifetime avoiding it. I keep wanting to write down my own stories of loss and every time I keep telling myself, not yet. I’m just not quite ready yet.

Because writing grief tends to stir up grief, and that take us back to rooms we don’t want to visit, storage areas of our minds and our lives that we lock away. And yet, if we still are wrecked to the point of collapse when writing these moments, I argue that we are not ready to share these stories with the world. If we are still falling apart when reading these stories out loud with our audience, I wonder, again, are we really read?

See, writing about grief is not about making your reader cry. It’s about making them remember.

Not their own losses necessarily — though that may happen — but something more elusive: the aftermath. The weight of absence, the way silence folds itself into your life after. Like when, after my mother’s funeral service, the priest suggested I bury her ashes immediately rather than take them home and I ignored him, and almost screamed that night just to hear my own voice fill the horrendous void she’d left behind.

Writing grief isn’t about reliving the moment of loss, not about exploiting the pain. We’re not after generating, for lack of a better term, trauma porn. It’s not about sensationalizing the hurt.

I think of writing grief as honoring it, as surviving it by acknowledging that the only way out is through.

Grief Is Not a Climax

It has become engrained in our culture that we should treat death or loss in fiction as a twist, a climax, a shock reveal or even a payoff. But in real life, grief doesn’t behave in that way. In fact, what it does is linger. It stays with us, in the smell embedded between the knit of a sweater left behind in a closet, or a song that comes creeping out of nowhere, that others dance to but that sends you racing to the bathroom with tears in your eyes because the last time you heard it, you were with them.

In the best pieces I’ve read about grief, the emphasis is less on the moment of the loss and more about the moments after: watching characters recalibrate their lives or fail at it, try to reorient themselves, pick up the pieces and carry on. That’s where the story lives. Not in the death — but in the after.

Take for example:

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter”: The story is about a couple who has lost a child. But she never dramatizes that moment. Instead, she shows us a dimming marriage, a house darkened by grief. The story takes place during a series of scheduled blackouts — and what an apt metaphor: the power out, the emotional current frayed, the marriage flickering. There’s no overwrought prose. No sobbing into the night. But the loss is everywhere. It’s in how they talk, how they eat, how they stop reaching for one another. Lahiri shows us how grief inhabits a room like a scent. We never see the child, but we feel their absence in every paragraph. That’s the power of restraint.

If you haven’t read this story, or Lahiri’s collection The Interpreter of Maladies, grab a copy here. You will NOT be disappointed and you will definitely feel all the feelings.

Let the Reader Feel What Isn’t Said

The mistake many writers make when handling grief is they explain. They get scared that readers won’t feel enough — so they add another paragraph of crying, another flashback, another tragic detail.

I did this in my very, very first creative writing class when I was just a tiny baby writer in community college. I wrote a piece about a husband grieving the loss of his wife and for twelve pages long, I repeated myself over and over, explaining his sadness. And the professor made me read it out loud. This was so painful, looking back, I should have declined reading it. And I apologize to my classmates for putting them through the pain of having to listen to it.

But what I learned from this, is that more emotion doesn’t create more empathy. Space does. And with that, here I come again with another reference to Raymond Carver.

At this point, let’s just admit it: the man was a brilliant writer.

Raymond Carver’s “A Small Good Thing”: It’s about a couple whose son is hit by a car on his birthday. The writing is pared down, restrained. We never get a dramatic breakdown scene. We get ordinary parents trying to understand what cannot be understood. We get a baker who keeps calling to demand payment for a cake that will never be eaten.

When I read this the first time, I was so green in terms of technique that I couldn’t understand the point of the cake. It bothered me. And of course, this was exactly the point. The absurdity of the baker calling about a cake that no longer mattered because the birthday child had died was the technique.

Through this almost brutal minimalism, Carver brings us to a moment of connection so raw and unexpected that it humbles us. The story doesn’t just offer pain. It offers the possibility of healing, the possibility of tomorrow, the hope that life could continue even after such a tragedy. And that’s where the truth of grief lives: not in the collapse, but in the comfort that follows — even if it’s small. Even if it’s temporary.

*trigger warning in this story, included in the collection Cathedral: there is a reference to, in Carver’s words, a Negro family, which still surprises me considering this was published in 1983.

Don’t Use Grief to Manipulate

We have to be careful as writers. Grief is sacred ground. If you’re writing about it to make your reader feel, ask yourself: what am I inviting them to feel with? Is it real? Or is it spectacle?

Write grief the way you would write love: with reverence.

Consider the end of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. We follow Frederic through war, through passion, through loss. And when Catherine dies, the prose does not bloom. It shrinks.

“But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue.”

There is no breakdown. No wailing. Just this — a metaphor of coldness, stillness. Hemingway understood something crucial: the more profound the grief, the quieter the sentence.

The ending to A Farewell To Arms as we know it, by the way, was one of 47 drafts. In previous versions, the prose is more verbose, there’s more emotion on the page, more anger, and Hemingway is laboring over balance. When he and his editor finally find balance, they leave us with silence rather than words, a walk back to the hotel in the rain after the loss, contrary to melodrama and tears and rage overexplained on the page. Hemingway understood that less, once again, is more. So, he let the silence do the work.

Let Grief Transform, Not Just Tragedy

The best grief fiction does not just dwell in pain. It moves through it. It allows the reader to carry something from the story — a small token of survival. Grief fiction is not about death. It’s about life continuing. But altered.

So when you write grief, don’t try to recreate the tragedy. Funny enough, the tragedy is what I dread writing the most anyway. I love to write an elegy, a remembrance of the thing that was before the tragedy happens, so that we feel the weight and experience the heartbreak in the aftermath of the loss.

So, show us the ache in the morning after. Show us the coffee cup someone can’t bring themselves to wash. Show us how people try — and fail — to go on.

And then, maybe, show us how they try again.

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True story:

The setting is perfect: a balmy breeze, outdoor in the tropics, and I’m reading from my novel, Kingdom of No Tomorrow. I’m not even reading the spicy part, when Melvin disrobes Nettie and carries her to the bedroom.

I’m just reading the part where they’re connecting. Vibing. Experiencing that first electrical current they know will lead to something bigger.

They don’t even kiss in that scene. All he does is rest a hand on hers. Her eyes follow curves of his face now worth rediscovering: eyebrow, jawline, the top button on that shirt, the things a woman notices when she realizes she’s catching feelings.

And yet, while nothing physical happens in that moment, right when I read that scene, I feel it. I hear it. I see it.

The looks on the faces of the audience, the smiles, the little laughs. Oh my. A little bit of discomfort in the room. Nice.

And I really don’t mind it. I think literature, like all good art, should disturb or move people, make them feel a certain way. But what I’ve noticed is that at nearly every reading where I share a scene involving love or sex or the prospect of both, there’s a polite laugh, a stifled snort, a knowing chuckle in the audience. Not because the scene is funny—but because it makes people feel awkward.

And I mean, sure, it’s a bit strange to feel voyeuristic, to peep into a scene where intimacy is unfolding. But I want to go deeper than that and say what I’m really feeling in a lot of audience members: there is a strange cultural reflex, especially in literary circles, to scoff at love. To treat intimacy like it’s something unserious, weak, even—especially when it’s written with feeling. And I wonder if in that reader’s mind, then, this automatically reduces a novel to unserious? Does the book then become irrelevant?

But what’s behind the snicker?

It’s almost as if readers who do scoff at love have been conditioned to view love as less than, unimportant, as if love belonged only for dreamers, unserious people, “hopeless romantics.” Most of romance, after all, is often written by women, for women, and it’s no surprise that the contempt for it is often gendered, classed, and racialized.

And I’m even catching myself thinking this way. I’ll admit it. I think of the one cousin in my family who refuses to attend book clubs discussions unless it’s around romance. She says the world is grim enough, and that she only wants to read books that make her dream of true love, of possibilities (even though she is married with child, which is hilarious to me). I thought when she said this, that maybe she should be at my readings if only for the spicy parts.

I also had a girl friend in high school tell me, upon finding me reading a Guy des Cars novel, that I should read more philosophy like Nietsche, instead of wasting my time with sensationalism and feelings.

Here’s my question: in the real world, what’s more universal than love?

What’s more destabilizing than desire? What strips us bare, faster than heartbreak or longing?

I don’t think writing about love and intimacy is simple at all. I think it takes skill, and I think I’m drawn to literary fictoin where love enters the scene in all its complexities, its contradictions, its rawness.

I don’t wish to set up characters for perfection. I want for them to roll in the mud, to get up scraped up and hurt, and I don’t care how many readers feel they are over love that is steeped in trauma: I want to write love that survives trauma, or that throws us in the pit of it. I don’t think love can be measured or appreciated or experienced fully unless characters, or human beings, have emerged from the trauma burnt to a crisp.

Love is what saves us.

Love, the real kind, is the one that makes a young woman like Nettie in my novel give up everything she has going for herself to follow a man in the cold of Chicago only to get her heart shattered, predictably, but to still plow on out of love, to continue loving him through it and in spite of all the betrayals.

When I write about a love like that, I’m digging into survival. Into hope. Into what makes us most human.

Love in literary fiction isn’t just about pairing bodies, although that is very sexy and compelling, and why wouldn’t we want that as well? Love, in fiction, is also about pairing wounds. It’s about showing how people carry their traumas together, into bed, how they speak tenderness in spite of ruin, and how they survive in reliance on each other. When done right, love on the page isn’t sentimental. It’s downright political and radical.

And yes, that can make people uncomfortable. Because to write love honestly means exposing need. It means writing characters who want. Who ask. Who fail at it. And sometimes, nothing is scarier to an audience than someone who risks vulnerability in a world that rewards detachment.

I want to defy that detachment, decolonize it. I’m here for love that complicates. Love that threatens empire. Love that saves. So I’ll keep writing love anyway, regardless of expectations. There is still a lot to love left to write about for all of us.

Bonus Writing Prompts for Paid Subscribers

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For My Paid Subscribers

If you’re subscribed to the paid tier, I’ve included:

• Writing techniques I use to build dread without revealing too much.

• Recommended reads by authors who excel at subtle, layered suspense.

• Writing prompts you can use to infuse quiet horror and suspense into your own fiction.

This space, after all, is also about process. I want you to write stories that leave readers breathless.

What Even Is Horror?

It’s Fall, and you know what that means: it’s horror season.

My daughter has already picked out her Halloween outfit (it’s her favorite holiday). Every year, she plans to be a witch, but this year, she wants to be the Devil. Did I mention she’s five?

I think horror as a genre has a reputation problem. Most people hear that word and immediately recoil. They can only think of slasher flicks, cheap jump scares, and Halloween masks. And Hollywood has done a wonderful job at painting these images for us through an abundance of Halloween movies, with a terrified Jamie Lee Curtis fleeing her insane brother Michael, who refuses to die in every episode.

There are endless movies and books in the genre, and they all entail terrifying encounters with serial killers or supernatural entities out for the same thing: slashing the protagonist and dicing them into tiny pieces.

Here’s something you may not know about me. I don’t write a lot of short stories (in fact, I have more essays written or poems, even, than short stories – but my very first short story was actually horror). It was a story taking place in Haiti, about a supernatural phenomenon involving a game of dominoes. I should probably bring this story back from the dead, as it was published in a newsletter with a tiny circulation that was eventually discontinued.

Nowadays, if you’ve read my work, you already know that I’m not interested in chasing the scream. This level of slasher horror does not interest me. I do relish, however, in a little bit of a shiver.

Horror, at its core, is about fear. It’s about dread. About knowing something is wrong and not being able to name it yet, or even do something about it. I know most of us immediately think of the master, Stephen King, when we think of horror, and with good reason. The Shining is an incredible work – reading it is a completely different experience on the page than it is on the screen. But: stories by Shirley Jackson, or Joyce Carol Oates, or Patricia Highsmith create such unease in your body as you read them that you want to crawl out of yourself. Think of the first time you read The Lottery, and think about how this story lingered in your mind because of the shock and discomfort it caused. As a writer, this kind of discomfort is unsettling, yes, but it makes me want to know: HOW DID THEY DO THAT?

So, let’s pause and define horror.

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