Community mourns Michèle Voltaire Marcelin, Haitian poet, writer and performing artist 

NEW YORK — Michèle Voltaire Marcelin, the Haitian writer, actress and visual artist known for works that explore exile, dictatorship and Haitian identity across disciplines, died April 29 at age 70. Through her poetry, novels, performances and films, Voltaire Marcelin became known over several decades for telling stories about exile, survival and the emotional weight of various traumas she experienced.

Her death, announced by her husband Jocelyn McCalla via Facebook, has prompted an outpouring of tributes across communities in Haiti, New York, Montreal, Paris — among numerous diasporic locales she touched. In sending condolences to McCalla, the community organizer and activist, and Voltaire Marcelin’s son, Leo Coltrane, many mourners recalled a powerfully fierce voice who carried her native country’s stories across borders and eras.

“Sleep well, Wondrous Woman! Rest in peace,” author Katia D. Ulysse wrote on Facebook in tribute. 

It’s been days, Michèle Voltaire Marcelin. Words still fail me,” she continued. “How brave you proved to be! A veritable warrior.”

Monique Clesca, a journalist and activist posted the last message the two shared in her tribute.

“When a maple tree falls, you must be able to do like a goat to eat its leaves – I’m doing that with Michele, the big maple tree that fell,” she wrote “Thank you Michele, rude woman, brave woman of Haiti!”

Among civic and cultural groups, the Haitian Roundtable remembered her as “a visionary artist, poet, actress, and cherished member” of the Haitian community. It highlighted her role as an 1804 List inductee whose work helped broaden appreciation for Haitian culture, art and storytelling across generations.

“Her legacy lives on through the lives she touched, the art she created, and the cultural path she helped shape.”

A voice borne of turbulent times

Born in Port-au-Prince on Dec. 3, 1955, as Michèle Voltaire, she left Haiti in 1971 for Santiago, Chile, where her brother, historian and filmmaker Frantz Voltaire, was studying and teaching.

Professor Sophie Mariñez wrote in the Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography that Voltaire Marcelin’s life changed dramatically after the 1973 military coup in Chile, where her family originally lived. That year, Chilean military police raided the family home, arrested many, including the teenage Michèle, and took them in a van to the national stadium. 

Released three days later, she fled to New York, where she would begin building her artistic and literary career. The stadium later became known as a detention and torture site under the Chilean dictatorship.

Mariñez described Voltaire Marcelin’s writing as deeply poetic while also confronting violence, fear and memory under dictatorship. Her literary work moved fluidly between French, Haitian Creole, English and Spanish.

Voltaire Marcelin’s 2006 novel La Désenchantée, set during François Duvalier’s rule in Haiti, became one of her best-known works around the globe. However, her early works of poetry helped establish Voltaire Marcelin as a bold, sensual artist whose observations touched on all aspects of living and loving — including the pain of losing her first husband, Ernst C. Marcelin, to gun violence in 1990.

“It’s a great loss for the community because Michèle loved Haiti and everything about Haiti,” said longtime fan Yolette Williams, executive director of Haitian American Alliance of New York. “She had a joie de vivre attitude that made people feel welcome around her.”

Williams recalled many fun cultural gatherings where Voltaire Marcelin recited poetry alongside saxophonist Buyu Ambroise. Whether centered on Haiti’s struggles, protest, love or sensuality, her poems transported her audience.

“She pulled you into the moment with her,” Williams said. “You could visualize every sensual word she said and feel that she brings you with her in that scene.”

Carrying the torch with new genres and generations

Over the years, Voltaire Marcelin took up a variety of genres to express her creativity, including painting, acting and performing about an array of topics.

She performed in productions including “Walking on Fire,” based on stories of Haitian women’s resistance collected by activist Beverley Bell, and appeared in “The Vagina Monologues” at the Brooklyn Museum. Voltaire Marcelin also acted in films by acclaimed Haitian director Raoul Peck, including “Haitian Corner” and “The Man by the Shore,” both centered on the trauma of Haiti’s dictatorship years.

Most recently, she emerged as a sought-after mentor and supporter of many programs to preserve and share Haitian culture, including the CUNY Haitian Studies Institute (HSI) and Haiti Cultural Exchange. In Haitian enclaves and far beyond them, she gave glimpses via social media of her life as an artist, embracing and being embraced by others in different scenes and settings — and in her everyday life.

“Michelle lived a full life,” HSI’s Executive Director Marie Lily Cerat. “She contributed so much to the building of this community, artistically speaking. Whenever you needed Michèle, she was ever present to give what she could give to make the community look good.”

Voltaire Marcelin and Leo Coltrane were often paired together for storytelling workshops that HSI organized as part of its Ayiti in the City summer program for youth.

“She’ll be sorely missed, she’s been a collaborator for many years,’ Cerat. “But I know her spirit will continue to inspire others, in the youth in the “Ayiti in the City,” the ones she worked with to share techniques and tools for storytelling — that is part of her legacy.

“That’s her living art,” Cerat said.

Funeral services are set to take place on Saturday, May 9, in Brooklyn, with a church service at the Church of St. Jerome, 2900 Newkirk Ave., followed by a tribute at the William Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba, where Voltaire Marcelin’s latest works are on exhibition with three other women artists, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

To honor her legacy, in lieu of flowers, the family respectfully requests donations be made to the following arts organizations: Haiti Cultural Exchange and CIDIHCA Montreal.

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