Aida Edemariam

Aida Edemariam is an Ethiopian-Canadian journalist based in the UK, who has worked in New York, Toronto and London.[1] She was formerly deputy review and books editor of the Canadian National Post,[2] and is now a senior feature writer and editor at The Guardian in the UK. She lives in Oxford.[1]

Biography

Aida was born to an Ethiopian father and a Canadian mother. She grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto.[3]

In 2014 her then forthcoming memoir, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History[4] – the story of Edemariam's Ethiopian grandmother, Yetemegnu[5] – was awarded the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Award for a non-fiction work in progress.[6][1]

Informed by the author's 70 hours of interviews and conversations in Amharic with Yetemegnu,[7] The Wife's Tale received favourable critical on its publication in February 2018 by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins,[8][9] with the reviewer for The Times finding it "enriching",[10] and Lucy Hughes-Hallett writing in the New Statesman: "To read The Wife's Tale is not just to hear about times past and (for a western reader) far away, but to be transported into them."[11] Nilanjana Roy in The Financial Times described it as an "outstanding and unusual memoir" in which Edemariam traces a century of Ethiopian history through the life of her nonagenarian grandmother.[12]

Edemariam was awarded the Ondaatje Prize for The Wife's Tale in May 2019.[13][14]

References
  1. "Aida Edemariam page". Rogers, Coleridge & White. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  2. Aida Edemariam (27 September 2002). "Us? Boring? Ha!". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  3. "Aida Edemariam Books & Biography". Harper Collins. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  4. "The Wife's Tale : A Personal History", Book Depository.
  5. "The Wife's Tale" at NetGallery.
  6. "RSL Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction 2014", Royal Society of Literature, December 2014.
  7. Sue Carter, "Author Aida Edemariam tells stories of Ethiopia through grandmother's eyes" Archived 2018-03-15 at the Wayback Machine, Metro (Toronto), 22 February 2018.
  8. Ammara Isa, "The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam" Archived 2018-03-15 at the Wayback Machine, IndieThinking at HarperCollins UK.
  9. The Wife’s Tale, Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-0007459605.
  10. Ysenda Maxtone Graham, "Review: The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam — famine, Red Terror and grief in Ethiopia", The Times, 17 February 2018.
  11. Lucy Hughes-Hallett, "The Wife’s Tale: Aida Edemariam’s vivid portrait of her 95-year-old Ethiopian grandmother", New Statesman, 11 February 2018.
  12. "The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam — hard times: A vivid family portrait brings a century of Ethiopian history to life", Financial Times, 16 February 2018.
  13. Alison Flood, "Ondaatje prize: Aida Edemariam wins for vivid biography of her grandmother", The Guardian, 13 May 2019.
  14. Heloise Wood, "Edemariam wins £10k Ondaatje Prize for 'outstanding' family memoir", The Bookseller, 14 May 2019.
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