Christopher Parent

Christopher Parent is a writer and intellectual property attorney currently living in Zurich, Switzerland. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from legal reviews sponsored by UVA Law School to humor sites like Points in Case. His passion is creative nonfiction and he has published essays in Across the Margin, Kairos Literary Magazine, The Whiskey Blot, The Good Men Project, Memoir Magazine, and Ginosko Literary Journal. Chris won the Fall 2020 Memoirist Prize for a story about his early introduction to racial inequality. He is an active member in the Geneva Writers Group and the International Memoir Writers’ Association. Links to a selection of works and more on his background can be found at chrisparent.net.

Pa Bliye Haiti

In the summer of 2010, my wife, Melissa, and I set off for Jacmel, Haiti, a port city of around 137,000 people that sits on the country’s Southern coast and about 40 kilometers from Port-au-Prince. It was seven months after an earthquake had made a desperate nation look apocalyptic and ravaged an already fragile infrastructure. Jacmel was damaged but serene in comparison to Port-au-Prince, where the streets were blocked by debris and traffic medians were filled with displaced residents sleeping in USAID tents.