Noted author and writer Amy Wilentz has reported and written about events in Haiti for more than three decades, from the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986 to the 2010 earthquake and the death of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 2014. In light of the current protests over rising fuel costs, and Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant's resignation, Wilentz can provide historical context on Haiti--its political and economic crises and the role of foreign aid in ameliorating and/or exacerbating them.

Her award-winning books, The Rainy Season Farewell: Haiti Since Duvalier (1990) and Farewell, Fred Voodoo (2013) take Haiti as their subject--the former serving as a portrait of Haiti after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the latter illuminating the complicated and confused attempts by outsiders to "fix" the country in the months after its devastating earthquake in 2013.

Wilentz has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Politico, Thompson-Reuters, The London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, TIME magazine, The New Republic, The Village Voice, and many other publications. She teaches in the literary journalism program at the University of California Irvine.

She can be reached at [email protected].