Myriam J. A. Chancy

Myriam Chancy

Myriam J. A. Chancy (born 1970) is a Haitian-Canadian writer who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and raised in Quebec City, Canada.^[1] She is currently a Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati.^[2] As a writer, she focuses on Haitian culture, gender, class, sexuality, and Caribbean women's studies.^[3] Her novels have won several awards, including the prestigious Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award.^[4]

Early life

Chancy attended the University of Manitoba in Manitoba, Canada, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy with Honors. Next, she received her Master's Degree in English Literature from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada in 1990. She received her Ph. D. in English at the University of Iowa in 1994.^[5] In an essay entitled "Dancing Words: Illness and the Writing Process," Chancy details her experience with the writing process while experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome.^[6]

Career

Chancy has held several positions in academia over the course of her lifetime. From 2002 until 2004, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the academic arts journal "Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism."^[7] She has taught English and Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor, at Arizona State University as an associate professor, at Louisiana State University as a full professor. Additionally, she has held visiting professorships at both Smith College and the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[8] She currently belongs to the University of Cincinnati as a Professor of Africana Studies, where she teaches courses in African Diaspora Studies, Caribbean Literature, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Feminist Theory and Women’s Studies, and Creative Writing of Fiction.^[9] She frequently contributes to journals, university presses, and national tenure review as a consequence of her expertise in Caribbean and Haitian social justice issues. Currently, Chancy serves on the editorial advisory board for the Journal of the Modern Language Association, the Advisory Council in the Humanities of the Fetzer Institute, and the Journal of Haitian Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[10]

Literary works

• Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women (Rutgers University Press, 1997)
• Searching for Safe Spaces: Afro-Caribbean Women Writers in Exile (Temple University Press, 1997)
• Spirit of Haiti (London: Mango Publications, 2003)
• The Scorpion’s Claw (Peepal Tree Press, 2005)
• The Loneliness of Angels (Peepal Tree Press, 2010)
• From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2012)

Awards

• 1998 - Outstanding Academic Book Award by Choice for Searching for Safe Spaces
• 2004 - Phoenix Award for Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals
• 2011 - Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award (Best Fiction) for The Loneliness of Angels

References