FELIFHA: A Festival to Promote Women's Literature in Haiti, Driven by the Vwa Fanm Ayisyèn Organization

From June 12 to 14, 2025, the Brazil-Haiti Cultural Center in Pétion-Ville will host the first edition of the Haitian Women's Literature Festival (FELIFHA). This ambitious initiative, led by the Vwa Fanm Ayisyèn (VFA) platform, aims to highlight the richness and diversity of Haitian women's literary production. Haitian literature is about to write a new page in its history. For the first time, a festival entirely dedicated to women's literature will emerge under the impetus of “Vwa Fanm Ayisyèn” (VFA), an organization committed to promoting women's works and rights. Named “FELIFHA,” for “Festival de la Littérature Féminine Haïtienne” (Haitian Women's Literature Festival), the event will take place over three days, on June 12, 13, and 14, 2025, within the Brazil-Haiti Cultural Center in Pétion-Ville. This unprecedented event aims, according to the organization, to highlight female voices, long underrepresented in the Haitian literary space. Through a series of conferences, writing workshops, discussion panels, book exhibitions, and literary presentations, FELIFHA will offer a platform to authors from diverse backgrounds, whether they are already known to the public or are taking their first steps in the field. For Renewed Knowledge Production The festival aims to be a space for dissemination, creation, and reflection. It will foster intellectual exchanges around themes such as the history of women's literature, gender studies, the place of Creole in literary creation, and the comparison between Haitian productions and those from other linguistic spheres. Emphasis will be placed on a rigorous academic approach, with the desire to produce renewed knowledge on women's literature, in all its plurality. At the heart of the program, writing workshops will allow participants to create their own texts, supervised by professionals in the field. These workshops will give rise to a collective work, a concrete symbol of this feminine literary effervescence. The idea is to stimulate creativity, but also to value the intellectual property of women, which is often neglected or made invisible. FELIFHA is part of a broader mission of “Vwa Fanm Ayisyèn,” which advocates for the recognition of female talents in Haiti, across all disciplines. The platform, which combines cultural action and advocacy for women's rights, wishes, with this festival, to contribute to the empowerment of Haitian female creators through culture and writing. Media Visibility In a note addressed to the press, the organization's president, Westerline Charles, invited Haitian media to cover the event, emphasizing the importance of promoting this initiative beyond literary circles. “The presence of the press is highly desired to give this event the visibility it deserves,” she wrote. The festival activities will begin on Thursday, June 12, at 10 AM and will conclude on the afternoon of Saturday, June 14. During these three days, Pétion-Ville will become a true hub of literary inspiration, where female voices will resonate with strength and elegance. Wideberlin Sénexant