Marguerite "Ezili Danto" Laurent

P.O. Box 3573
Stamford, CT 06905
Phone: 203 829 7210
E-mail: erzilidanto@yahoo.com
Web site: ezilidanto.com

Author's Bio

Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent is a performance poet and playwright. She is the author/performer of the one-woman performance series - Red, Black & Moonlight. She is a human rights lawyer, cultural and political activist and the founder and president of the Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. She runs the Haitian Perspectives on-line journal and the Ezili Dantò Newsletter.

Publications and Prizes

Performances:

Red, Black & Moonlight, Austin Arts Center - Hartford, CT (2008), St. Martin Book Fair - St. Martin (2006), Celebrating Haiti's Bicentennial, Carnegie Hall - New York, NY (2004), Stamford Center for the Arts - Stamford, CT (2001)

Prizes:

Connecticut Playwright Fellowship, Vermont Writing Center Residency, Urban Artist Grant from Connecticut Commission on the Arts, Mayor's Art Grant from Stamford

Marguerite "Ezili Danto" Laurent Resume

Personal Favorites

Favorite Books:

The Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, the Four Vedas, Upanishads, The Gnostic Gospels, Lapriyè Ginen, The Prophet, Moor's Last Sigh, Midnight's Children, Coming Through Slaughter, The Soul of Black Folks (DuBois), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Wretched of the Earth, If (Rudyard Kipling), Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself (Walt Whitman), Splendor In the Grass (William Wordsworth), One Hundred Years of Solitude, Two Thousand Seasons (Ayi Kwei Armah), Lea Kokoyé and Ti Sentaniz (Maurice Sixto), Self Evident (DiFranco)

Favorite Authors:

Kahlil Gibran, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken), Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Octavia Butler, Amiri Baraka, Paulo Freire, Malcom X, Frantz Fanon, Paul Robeson, Paula Frieres, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, Félix Morisseau-Leroy, Maurice Sixto, Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje (Coming Through Slaughter), Isabel Allende, Ani DiFranco, Suheir Hammad. Favorite Lyricists: include Bob Marley, Smokey Robinson, Don McClean (Vincent), John Lennon, Prince (Purple Rain), Sarah Mclachlan, Lauren Hill (the Miseducation of Lauren Hill), India Arie and Angie Stone.

Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the writers listed in it.
Listing last updated: December 4, 2008

More Information

Listed as:

Spoken Word Artist

Gives readings?

Yes

Travels for readings?

Yes

Identifies as:

African American

Prefers to work with:

Any

Born in:

Haiti

Raised in:

Haiti, CT