Louis-Philippe Dalembert, an award-winning Haitian writer whose works have been translated into Danish, English, German, Italian, Romanian and Spanish, lectures on “Writing Since Childhood” on March 6 at 4:15 p.m. in Scripps College’s Humanities Auditorium, 981 N. Amherst Ave. This free event is open to the public.
Photographer Credit: Daniel Mordzinski
A celebrated poet, novelist, essayist and journalist, Dalembert is a recipient of Scripps College’s spring 2014 Erma Taylor O’Brien Distinguished Visiting Professorship. He visits Scripps the week of March 3 to lecture in classes and meet with students.
His writings often reference his challenging childhood in his native hometown of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Soon after he was born, his father died and Dalembert was subsequently raised by female relatives in Haiti’s capital. A current resident of Paris, Dalembert has traveled extensively throughout the world and those experiences have significantly influenced his writings.
A recipient of such awards as the Prix RFO du Livre and the Premio Casa de las Américas – one of Latin America’s oldest and most prestigious literary awards – Dalembert went on to graduate from Université Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle, with a doctorate degree in general and comparative literature. Last year, he was a visiting associate professor of writing, French film and Caribbean literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Named in honor of Erma Taylor O’Brien ’36, the O’Brien Distinguished Visiting Professorship was endowed through her estate. The professorship allows Scripps College to host visiting scholars-in-residence whose expertise in the liberal and fine arts fields significantly enriches academic thought.