Maaza Mengiste Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Maaza Mengiste Biography

Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and lived in Nigeria and Kenya before settling in the United States. Her debut novel, the award-winning Beneath the Lion's Gaze, was selected by The Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books. It has been translated into several languages. Her second novel, The Shadow King will be published in September 2019.

Her fiction and nonfiction writing can be found in The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC Radio 4, Granta, and Lettre International, among other places. She is a Fulbright Scholar with fellowships from the Emily Harvey Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Prague Summer Program, and Yaddo. Mengiste was a Runner-up for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, as well as a finalist for a Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, an NAACP Image Award, and an Indies Choice Book of the Year Award in Adult Debut. She lives in New York City.

Maaza Mengiste's website

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