Humanities Center Colloquium with
Haitian poet and novelist, Louis-Philippe Dalembert

with an introduction by John Walsh (FRIT) and response by Felix Germain (Africana)

Sponsored by: Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Center and Year of Diversity;
University Honors College; European Studies Center; Center for Latin American Studies;
Departments of French & Italian and Africana Studies

Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s latest novels, Ballade d’un amour inachevé (2013)
and Avant que les ombres s’effacent (2017), are tales of migration. The former
takes the reader between Haiti to Italy, while the latter goes from Poland
to Haiti. Both novels reimagine journeys of migrants and refugees amidst
earthquakes and war, respectively. The colloquium will feature Dalembert’s
readings of selected passages, followed by a discussion of the ways the
literature mediates the impact of political and natural disasters.

Author of prize-winning novels, short stories, and collections of poetry,
Louis-Philippe Dalembert is a self-described vagabond. He has held numerous
writer-in-residence fellowships all over the world, including Rome, Paris,
Berlin, Tunis, Kinshasa, and Jerusalem. Holder of a doctorate in Comparative
Literature from the Sorbonne, Dalembert has also taught at the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Bern Universität in Switzerland