Maaza Mengiste
Maaza Mengiste (born 1974) is an Ethiopian-American writer and author of the novels Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019).
Maaza Mengiste | |
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![]() Mengiste, BookExpo 2019 | |
Born | 1974 (age 45–46) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia |
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Alma mater | New York University |
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Notable works |
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Website | |
maazamengiste |
Early life
Mengiste was born in 1974 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but left the country at the age of four when her family fled the Ethiopian Revolution. She spent the rest of her childhood in Nigeria, Kenya, and the United States.[1] She later studied in Italy as a Fulbright Scholar and earned an MFA degree in creative writing from New York University.
Career
Mengiste has published fiction and nonfiction dealing with migration, the Ethiopian revolution, and the plight of sub-Saharan immigrants arriving in Europe. Her 2010 debut novel Beneath the Lion's Gaze - the story of a family struggling to survive the tumultuous and bloody years of the Ethiopian Revolution - was named one of the 10 best contemporary African books by The Guardian and translated into French, Spanish,[2] Portuguese,[3] German, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish.[4] Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, Lettre Internationale, Enkare Review, Callaloo, The Granta Anthology of the African Short Story, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She was runner-up for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize,[5] and a finalist for a Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize,[6] an NAACP Image Award, and an Indies Choice Book of the Year Award in Adult Debut. In 2013 she was World Literature Today’s Puterbaugh Fellow. She counts among her influences E. L. Doctorow, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Edith Wharton.[7]
Mengiste has also been involved in human rights work. She serves on the advisory board of Warscapes, an independent online magazine that highlights current conflicts across the world, and is affiliated with the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.[8] Mengiste also serves on the Board of Directors for Words without Borders.[9]
Alongside Edwidge Danticat and Mona Eltahawy, Mengiste contributed a section to Richard E. Robbins's 2013 documentary film Girl Rising on girl's education around the world for 10x10 Films, with narration by Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Alicia Keys, and Cate Blanchett.
Mengiste teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Queens College, City University of New York,[10] and was a lecturer in Creative Writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.[11]
From January to June 2020, Mengiste is "writer in residence" of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich.[12]
Awards, honors, and nominations
- Fulbright Fellowship, Italy, 2010–2011
- Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, Shortlist, 2010
- Beneath the Lion's Gaze named one of The Best Books of 2010, Fiction. Christian Science Monitor, 2010
- Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Fiction Runner-up, 2011
- Beneath the Lion's Gaze named one of "The 10 Best Contemporary African Books". The Guardian, 2012
- Puterbaugh Fellow, 2013
- National Endowment for the Arts, Literature Fellowship, 2018 - Prose
- Creative Capital Award, Literary Fiction, 2019
- The Bridge Book Award - American Academy in Rome, US Embassy to Italy, Casa delle Letterature di Roma, Federazione Unitaria Italiana Scrittori, Center for Fiction - Rome, 2019[13], [14]
- Literaturhaus - Writers in Residence, 2020
- American Academy of Arts and Letters, Literature Award Winner, 2020
Works
Books
- Beneath the Lion's Gaze, Norton, 2010
- The Shadow King, Norton, 2019[15]
- Addis Ababa Noir, Akashic Books, 2020
Essays
- "Vanishing Virgil". Granta (November 15) 2011
- "A New 'Tizita'". Callaloo, 2011
- "The Madonna of the Sea". Granta (January 30) 2012
- "Creative Writing as Translation". Callaloo, 2012
- "The Conflicted Legacy of Meles Zenawi". Granta, 2012
- "What Makes a Real African?". The Guardian (July 7) 2013
- "We must not look away from the crises in Africa". The Guardian (31 July 31) 2014
- "From a Shrinking Place". The New Inquiry (November 25) 2014
- "Sudden Flowers". The New Yorker (February 4) 2015
- "Fiction Tells a Truth That History Cannot". Guernica (November 2) 2015
- "Unheard-of Things". The Massachusetts Review (57:1), 2016
- "Primo Levi at the United Nations: Maaza Mengiste". Primo Levi Center, Printed_Matter (May 6) 2016
- "Bending History". NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art (November: 38–39) 2016
- "How 'S-Town' Fails Black Listeners". Rolling Stone (April 13) 2017
- "I Want My Work to Exist in the Memories of People". Anxy Magazine (3), 2018
- "Foreword".[16] In Vintage Addis Ababa[17], Ayaana Publishing 2018
- "This is What the Journey Does". In The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Living, Abrams Books[18] 2018
- "In Ethiopia's Highlands, a Search for Hope and Horror". Wall Street Journal (August 20) 2019
- "Writing About the Forgotten Black Women of the Italo-Ethiopian War". Literary Hub (September 24) 2019
- "From Homer to Alexievich: Top 10 books about the human cost of war". The Guardian (January 29) 2020
References
- Daniel Musiitwa, "Maaza Mengiste Talks About Her Writing and the Power of Individual Stories", AfricaBookClub.com, November 1, 2011.
- Bajo La Mirada del Leon, La Mirada Salvaje. Trans. Anna Styczńiska, 2015.
- Sob o Olhar do Leão, Editora Record. Trans. Flávia Rössler, 2011
- Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama (August 25, 2012). "The 10 best contemporary African books". The Guardian. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
- LLC, D. Verne Morland, Digital Stationery International. "Dayton Literary Peace Prize - 2011 Award Finalists". www.daytonliterarypeaceprize.org. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
- "2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel page on the Center for Fiction Website". Retrieved June 4, 2019.
- Bady, Aaron, "Interview: Maaza Mengiste", Post45, October 17, 2014.
- "Advisory Board", Warscapes.
- "Board of Directors", Words without Borders, February 1, 2019.
- "Home". www.qc.cuny.edu. Retrieved February 3, 2017.
- "Maaza Mengiste - Lewis Center for the Arts". Archived from the original on April 9, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2019.
- "Writers in Residence Zurich".
- "Calendar | American Academy in Rome".
- https://twitter.com/FulbrightIT/status/1207325450667790336
- 21 Books to Curl Up With This Fall , Newsweek,
- "Vintage Addis Ababa: Recollections of everyday people: Philipp Schütz, Wongel Abebe, Nafkot Gebeyehu, Wongel Abebe; Philipp Schütz, Maaza Mengiste: 9789994473250: Amazon.com: Books". Retrieved June 4, 2019.
- "Photography book". Tumblr. Retrieved June 4, 2019.
- "The Art of Books Since 1949". ABRAMS Books. Retrieved June 4, 2019.
General references
- Biography in Anita Theorell, Afrika har ordet (2010), Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, ISBN 978-91-7106-673-2. (in Swedish)
- Carin Ståhlberg (October 16, 2010). "Revolutionens offer". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish).
External links
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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Maaza Mengiste |
- Official website
- A Conversation with Maaza Mengiste at World Literature Today
- Webcast at the Library of Congress, March 21, 2013