Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu
Mengestu at Georgetown University in 2012.
Born	1978 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Occupation	Novelist, Professor of Creative Writing
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Ethiopian
Alma mater	Georgetown University; Columbia University
Literary movement	Realism, postmodernism

Dinaw Mengestu (born 1978) is an award-winning Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to two novels, he has written for Rolling Stone on the war in Darfur, and for Jane Magazine on the conflict in northern Uganda.^[1] His writing has also appeared in Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He is Lannan Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University.^[2] Since his first book was published in 2007, he has received numerous literary awards, and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.^[3]

Early life

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His family left Ethiopia during the war when he was two years old and immigrated to the United States. He was raised in Peoria, Illinois, and graduated from Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois.^[4]

Mengestu received his B.A. in English from Georgetown University, and his MFA in fiction from Columbia University.^[5]

Career

Mengestu's début novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, was published in the United States in March 2007 by Penguin Riverhead. It tells the story of Sepha Stephanos, who fled the warfare of the Ethiopian Revolution seventeen years before and immigrated to the United States. He owns and runs a failing grocery store in Logan Square, then a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C. that is becoming gentrified. He and two fellow African immigrants, all of whom are single, deal with feelings of isolation and nostalgia for home. Stephanos becomes involved with a white woman and her daughter, who move into a renovated house in the neighborhood.

The novel was published in the UK as Children of the Revolution in May 2007 by Jonathan Cape. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages.^{[citation needed]}

Mengestu's second novel, How to Read the Air, was published in October 2010.^[6] Part of the novel was excerpted in the July 12, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, after Mengestu was selected as one of their "20 under 40" writers of 2010.^[7]

Awards and honors

• MacArthur Foundation Fellow, 2012 ^[8]
• The New Yorker "20 Under 40", 2010^[9]
• Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 2008
• New York Public Library Young Lions Award Finalist 2008
• Dylan Thomas Prize, Finalist 2008
• Prix du Premier Meilleur Roman Etranger, 2007
• Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, Finalist 2007
• Prix Femina Etranger, Finalist, 2007
• Guardian First Book Award, 2007
• National Book Award Foundation, 5 Under 35 Award, 2007
• Lannan Fiction Fellowship, 2007
• New York Times Notable Book 2007

Bibliography

• The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, Penguin Riverhead, 2007, ISBN 1594489408; Children of the Revolution, Vintage, 2008, ISBN 9780099502739
• How to Read the Air, Penguin, 2010, ISBN 9781594487705

References

External links

• Linda Kulman, "Dinaw Mengestu Captures Immigrant Life", NPR, 19 Feb 2008
• Sarah Crown, "Ethiopian-American wins Guardian First Book Award", The Guardian, 5 Dec 2007
• "Dinaw Mengestu", culturebase.net