Melissa – Our Story Insight

Hurricane Melissa set to trigger $150 million Jamaica catastrophe bond to help rebuild

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:19:50 +0000

Drone view of damage to coastal homes after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Alligator Pond, Jamaica, Oct. 29, 2025.

Maria Alejandra Cardona | Reuters

Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane of the year, made landfall this week as a Category 5 storm in Jamaica. The strength of the storm means it will likely trigger a full payout from a catastrophe bond designed to provide funds to the island in the event of catastrophic weather events.

The $150 million catastrophe bond, structured by Aon, is intended to help the island’s people rebuild after natural disasters by providing Jamaica parametric coverage against losses from named storms. The policy took effect this year and lasts through 2027.

The government of Jamaica is the first government in the Caribbean region, and the first of any small island state, to independently sponsor a cat bond, according to Aon. Its likely payout demonstrates the value of a unique type of backstop funded by the private markets.

In order to trigger the full payment, the storm has to meet a particular strength criteria. The central pressure of the storm must be at or below 900 millibars as its makes landfall and crosses the island nation.

Early data from the National Hurricane Center shows Hurricane Melissa’s pressure stayed below 900 millibars in several areas. Those readings are in the process of being verified by an independent calculation agent.

“While the final numbers are still being verified, the early signs suggest the transaction is doing what it was designed to do: getting critical funds to the country quickly after a major disaster,” Chris Lefferdink, Aon’s head of insurance-linked securities for North America, said in a statement.

The review process typically takes 2 to 3 weeks, and the earliest possible payout to Jamaica could come in approximately 1 month, according to a spokesperson from Aon.

A drone view shows an affected area after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Crane Road, Black River, Jamaica, October 30, 2025.

Maria Alejandra Cardona | Reuters

Previous parametric transactions payouts have taken 3 months or more, but for this event Aon used an innovative data source to enable faster payments.

The catastrophe bond was placed using the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s “capital at risk” program, which is used to transfer the risks associated with natural catastrophes to the capital markets, allowing the country to access funds quickly after a major event.

“What you have is a capital provider putting funds in the pool, an insurer putting the coupon for those funds in the pool [and] if the storm hits that criteria, they get the money in a much quicker fashion,” Aon CFO Edmund Reese told CNBC’s Contessa Brewer in an interview.

Damaged furniture and debris after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Black River, Jamaica, Oct. 30, 2025.

Octavio Jones | Reuters

Catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities were created in the mid 1990s in the wake of Hurricane Andrew’s destruction. They’ve since grown in popularity, with the cat bond market growing by over 50% since the end of 2022 to nearly $55 billion.

“Public-private partnerships like Jamaica’s continue to highlight how parametric insurance can deliver rapid, transparent relief in the wake of severe storms,” Lefferdink said.

Jamaica very narrowly missed the requirements necessary to receive a payout from a separate cat bond when Hurricane Beryl battered the island in 2024, resulting in $995 million in damages to homes, crops and infrastructure, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The post Hurricane Melissa set to trigger $150 million Jamaica catastrophe bond to help rebuild appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Melissa Febos and Lydi Conklin Aren’t Afraid to Be Direct ‹

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:13:10 +0000

This is Awakeners, a Lit Hub Radio podcast about mentorship in the literary arts. Robert Frost allegedly said he was not a teacher but an “awakener.” On every episode of this podcast, host Lena Crown speaks with writers, artists, critics, and scholars across generations who have awakened something for one another. We chat about how their relationship has evolved, examine the connections and divergences in their writing and thinking, and dig into the archives for traces of their mutual influence.

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On the first episode of Season 2 of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the writers Melissa Febos and Lydi Conklin, who met at the MacDowell artist residency back in 2011.

Melissa had just published Whip Smart, her first book, a propulsive memoir about her experience working as a professional dominatrix in a dungeon in New York. Lydi was still an MFA student when they met Melissa—this was back when MacDowell let you attend the residency as a grad student—and according to Lydi, they desperately wanted to be Melissa’s friend. Now, more than ten years later, in this episode you’ll hear Melissa call Lydi her most reliable reader.

We cover what it’s like to be at a writing residency like MacDowell, Lydi’s first (slightly hilarious) appearance at Melissa’s studio door, memorable margin notes they’ve exchanged, the abandoned projects they wish the other would return to, and the advice Melissa gave Lydi that kept them from doing something, quote, “wildly inappropriate.” In the second half of the conversation, we turn more explicitly to their new books. We discuss queerness, world-building, and the research process behind The Dry Season and Songs of No Provenance, including the choice Melissa almost made that could have produced a very different book.

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Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com

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Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Girlhood—winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and the forthcoming memoir The Dry Season. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, LAMBDA Literary, the Black Mountain Institute, the British Library, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Best American Essays, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine. She is a full professor at the University of Iowa.

Lydi Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, work-study and tuition scholarships from Bread Loaf, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Sewanee Writers Conference, Emory University, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, Lighthouse Works, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are now an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, is forthcoming in June 2025 from Catapult in the US and Vintage in the UK.

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More Lydi: https://lydia-conklin.com/

More Melissa: https://www.melissafebos.com/

Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.

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The post Melissa Febos and Lydi Conklin Aren’t Afraid to Be Direct ‹ appeared first on Our Story Insight.