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October 11, 2012

Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu wins MacArthur "Genius"
Grant.

Ethiopian Novelist Receives MacArthur “Genius” Grant

Dinaw Mengestu, a native of Ethiopia, has become his own successful immigrant story.

Mengestu, a Washington, D.C.-based novelist and writer, has been named one of 23 MacArthur Fellows for 2012, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation announced last week. MacArthur Fellows will receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached financial support over the next five years.

Mengestu’s novel and magazine pieces focus on the experience of immigrants whose memories are permanently seared by escape from violence in their native lands, according to the MacArthur Foundation. Mengestu was two years old when he moved with his family  from Ethiopia to the United States.

His first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, was published in 2008. It is the story of a struggling Ethiopian refugee living in a gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

“Mengestu paints a powerful portrait of lives uprooted and remade in the wake of political violence, as well as fractures and tensions that characterize rapidly changing areas of contemporary urban America,” writes the MacArthur Foundation.

In addition to writing fiction, Mengestu is a freelance journalist. He recently traveled to sub-Saharan Africa to write about life in Darfur, Uganda, and the Congo near the border of Rwanda. He has written for Harper’s, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal.

The 34-year-old Mengestu earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a master’s in fine arts from Columbia University.

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