Filan, Kenaz (Kevin Filan)

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Filan, Kenaz (Kevin Filan)

PERSONAL:

Born Kevin Filan; name legally changed to Kenaz Filan, 2007. Religion: Haitian Vodou.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Author and editor. Managing editor of newWitch magazine; owner of the Yahoo group TriStateVodou. Also works as a Web designer, workshop presenter, diviner, and counselor.

MEMBER:

Société la Belle Venus.

WRITINGS:

The Haitian Vodou Handbook: Protocols for Riding with the Lwa, Destiny Books (Rochester, VT), 2007.

Author of Kenaz Filan Web log. Author of "Rite Behavior" column in PanGaia. Contributor to periodicals (as Kevin Filan), including Renaissance, Black Flame, and Grue. Contributor to Web sites (as Kevin Filan), including Enfuse, Horror Library, and Widdershins.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and editor Kenaz Filan, an initiate of the Société la Belle Venus in New York City, is the author of The Haitian Vodou Handbook: Protocols for Riding with the Lwa. Filan also serves as the managing editor of newWitch, a magazine dedicated to Pagan issues, pens a column for the quarterly magazine PanGaia, and manages TriState Vodou, a Web group devoted to the practice of Vodou. In addition, Filan offers tarot card readings as well as workshops on writing, Voudou, and gender issues. Born Kevin Filan, the author had her name legally changed in 2007. "I am transgendered," she noted on her Web site. "To be more precise, I was born with a male body and an identity which is androgynous but which leans toward female."

In The Haitian Vodou Handbook, Filan presents an insider's perspective on "a complex African diaspora spirituality and a form of worship that marries the secular and the spiritual," observed a critic in Publishers Weekly. The author examines the history of Vodou and its relationship to Haitian culture, addresses common misperceptions about the religion, describes Vodou symbols, rites, myths, and spells, and discusses the lwa, the spirits honored in Haitian Vodou. According to Booklist contributor Patricia Monaghan, "Filan does an excellent job of presenting his religion to the lay reader."