Quote by Edwidge Danticat: “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously.”

Writing and reading are not neutral acts — in some places, they are acts of resistance that carry real risk. This is a call for artists to take their work seriously enough to make it worthy of the courage it takes for some readers to simply hold the book.

Danticat published the essay collection Create Dangerously in 2010, the year a catastrophic earthquake killed over 200,000 people in Haiti. The book had been years in the making and addressed the relationship between artists and their home countries in exile, a theme made more urgent by the disaster.

Haitian-American novelist and essayist who writes about the Haitian diaspora, political violence, and the experience of displacement. Her debut novel Breath, Eyes, Memory and her 2007 memoir Brother I'm Dying are considered essential works of Caribbean-American literature.