Culture

Author Maaza Mengiste Wins MacArthur 'Genius' Grant

Ethiopia Observer · 4 hours ago · Read the Full Story on Ethiopia Observer

AI SUMMARY

Author and professor Maaza Mengiste has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow, receiving an unrestricted $800,000 grant for her creative work exploring history, war, and trauma.

Maaza Mengiste has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow and awarded an unrestricted $800,000 grant.
She is one of 21 MacArthur Fellows selected this year for exceptional creativity.
She currently serves as a Professor of English teaching creative writing at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, since 2023.
Her writing focuses on war, memory, Ethiopia, and the transmission of trauma across generations.
Her second novel, The Shadow King, was a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize and details women resistance fighters during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia.
Her first novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010), follows a physician and his sons during the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie and the rise of the military junta.
Her forthcoming novel, A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths, is set in interwar Berlin and explores the rise of the Nazis from the perspective of Black Germans.
She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from New York University, and previously taught at Princeton University and Queens College.
She is also the editor of the 2019 anthology Addis Ababa Noir.

Read the Full Story on Ethiopia Observer

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