Charis welcomes Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Annell López for a celebration of Village Weavers, an extraordinary and enduring story of two families—forever joined by country, and by long-held secrets—and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken.

In 1940s’ Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier’s rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Dominican family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and—perhaps—forgive the past.

Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls—connected their entire lives—who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.

Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author most recently of the novel Village Weavers (Tin House). Her previous novel, What Storm, What Thunder, was named a "Best Book of 2021," by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Globe & Mail, shortlisted for the Caliba Golden Poppy Award & Aspen Words Literary Prize, longlisted for Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize & the OCM Bocas Prize, and awarded an ABA from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her past novels include: The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the 2011 Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award, Best Fiction 2010; The Scorpion’s Claw and Spirit of Haiti, shortlisted in the Best First Book Category, Canada/Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Prize, 2004. She is also the author of several academic monographs, including Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters & Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone.com Journal, Electric Literature, and Guernica. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College in California.

Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’LL GIVE YOU A REASON from the Feminist Press forthcoming April 9th. A Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, her work has also received support from Tin House and has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29 and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.

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Village Weavers: Myriam J. A. Chancy in conversation with Annell López