We continue to think about the Haitian Revolution with our guest, Lesley S. Curtis. Dr. Curtis is the founder and president of Sagely, a Philadelphia-based company offering strategy and communication services to small businesses, schools, and universities. She holds a PhD in literature from Duke University, where she studied gender and abolitionism in the French Caribbean. In 2015, she and Christen Mucher (Smith College) co-translated Haiti’s first novel, Stella, an allegorical retelling of the Haitian Revolution. The novel was originally written in French by Haitian politician Émeric Bergeaud and first published in 1859.

We talk about Stella, the relationship between history writing and literature, the ongoing resonances of the Haitian Revolution, and the generous act of translation.