In early March, Yale University’s Marlene Daut and Kaiama Glover won a national award, the René Wellek Prize, for their co-edited book A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Michaela Herrmann (Yale University) reports:
Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, and Kaiama L. Glover, Professor of Black Studies, have been awarded the 2026 René Wellek Prize for their co-edited book, A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
The René Wellek Prize is awarded annually by the American Comparative Literature Association to the best book in comparative literature. Daut and Glover’s edited essay collection featured twenty-seven contributors.
The prize committee called A History of Haitian Literature “comprehensive, erudite, and sprawling,” noting that it is likely the first “full-scale history” of Haitian literature published in English. “The authors in this outstanding collection mine literary and performative archives and events that explore what the editors name as ‘the twinned matters of storytelling and sovereignty’ in Haitian literary contexts related to the ‘seemingly endless challenge of self-determination,’” wrote the prize committee.
Daut and Glover are both known for their work on the literature, culture, and history of the Caribbean. Daut is the author of Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), co-winner of the 2024 Frederick Douglass Book prize, and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025), winner of the 2025 Haiti Book Prize and the 2026 Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies.
Glover is currently writing a biography of René Depestre, a former socialist militant, poet, and intellectual from Haiti. She is also the author of A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Duke University Press, 2021) and Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon (Liverpool University Press, 2010). She is the prizewinning translator of works by Haitian writers René Depestre, Frankétienne, Yanick Lahens, among several others.
Daut and Glover were honored at the ACLA’s 2026 annual meeting.
For the original article, see https://fas.yale.edu/news-announcements/news/marlene-l-daut-and-kaiama-l-glover-win-rene-wellek-book-prize
Also see “Yale’s Marlene Daut and Kaiama Glover win national award for co-edited book on Haitian literature,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, https://jbhe.com/2026/03/yales-marlene-daut-and-kaiama-glover-win-national-award-for-co-edited-book-on-haitian-literature
In early March, Yale University’s Marlene Daut and Kaiama Glover won a national award, the René Wellek Prize, for their co-edited book A History of Haitian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Michaela Herrmann (Yale University) reports: Marlene L. Daut, Professor of French and of Black Studies, and Kaiama L. Glover, Professor of Black Studies, have been awarded the
