Nisha Rathode (Editor)

Dinaw Mengestu

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Nationality
  
American

Name
  
Dinaw Mengestu

Ethnicity
  
Ethiopian

Role
  
Novelist

Spouse
  
Anne-Emmanuelle Mengestu

Notable awards
  
MacArthur Fellow


Dinaw Mengestu Dinaw Mengestu Immigrant is a very political term

Occupation
  
Novelist, Professor of Creative Writing

Awards
  
Guardian First Book Award, Lannan Literary Fellowship

Nominations
  
NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author

Books
  
All Our Names, The Beautiful Things Th, How to Read the Air, Children of the Revolution, All Our Names ‑ Signed

Similar People
  
Mengistu Haile Mariam, Teju Cole, Maaza Mengiste, Taiye Selasi, Rivka Galchen

Profiles


Literary movement
  
Realism, postmodernism

Dinaw mengestu the beautiful things that heaven bears


Dinaw Mengestu (born 30 June 1978) is an Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to three novels, he has written for Rolling Stone on the war in Darfur, and for Jane Magazine on the conflict in northern Uganda. 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. In 2007 the National Book Foundation named him a "5 under 35" honoree. Since his first book was published in 2007, he has received numerous literary awards, and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.

Contents

Dinaw Mengestu EthiopianAmerican wins Guardian First Book Award Books

Meet dinaw mengestu author of all our names new star of the african literature


Early life

Dinaw Mengestu Dinaw Mengestu MacArthur Foundation

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.

Dinaw Mengestu The man in the middle Books The Guardian

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

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 17 years before and immigrated to the United States. He owns and runs a failing grocery store in Logan Circle, then a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C. that is becoming gentrified. He and two fellow African immigrants, all of them 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 United Kingdom as Children of the Revolution in May 2007 by Jonathan Cape. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Mengestu's second novel, How to Read the Air, was published in October 2010. 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. This novel was also the winner of the 2011 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. This literary award was established in 2007 by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

In 2014, he was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 project as one of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and the talent to define the trends of the region.

Awards and honors

  • New York Times Notable Book 2007
  • Lannan Fiction Fellowship, 2007
  • National Book Award Foundation, 5 Under 35 Award, 2007
  • Guardian First Book Award, 2007
  • Prix Femina étranger, Finalist, 2007
  • Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, Finalist 2007
  • Prix du Premier Meilleur Roman Etranger, 2007
  • Dylan Thomas Prize, Finalist 2008
  • New York Public Library Young Lions Award Finalist 2008
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 2008
  • The New Yorker "20 Under 40", 2010
  • Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature, 2011
  • MacArthur Foundation Fellow, 2012
  • 2012 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary ExcellenceWendland, Tegan.
  • References

    Dinaw Mengestu Wikipedia