Kirk Colvin spent a year as U.S. Coast Guard attaché to the American Embassy during the final months of the brutal Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier regime in the 1980s. His time there informed his novel Bloodless Coup, winner of the Maurice Prize for Fiction. The $10,000 prize is awarded to UC Davis alumni and was established in 2005 by bestselling author John Lescroart in honor of his father.
A book by Jeffrey Kahn, assistant professor of anthropology, about Haitian boat migration to the U.S. is the winner of a 2020 Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association.
UC Davis anthropologist Jeffrey Kahn’s book on Haitian boat migration to the United States is the co-winner of the 2019 Avant Garde Book Prize from the Haitian Studies Association. The award selection committee called Kahn’s book, "Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire" (Chicago University Press, 2019) a “timely and important contribution” to the field.