“…unless we’re able to see ourselves in the person that we’re pointing a camera at or writing about, unless we recognize or seek to recognize some part of us in the art we make, what we’re doing is projecting people’s experiences as fascinations or curiosities or metaphors or lessons in living. And we’re still outside.”

—Maaza Mengiste

Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist whose work examines the individual lives at stake during migration, war, and exile, and considers the intersections of photography and violence. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, her critically acclaimed debut novel, was selected by The Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and was named one of the best books of 2010 by The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and other publications.

Beneath the Lion’s Gaze is set in Ethiopia in the 1970s and revisits the last days of the Ethiopian monarchy and the brutal beginnings of the Derg, the socialist military junta that replaced it. The story focuses on the Hailu family as they struggle to make difficult choices within a political climate that grows increasingly complex and dangerous. Kirkus calls Beneath the Lion’s Gaze “an arresting, powerful novel that works on both personal and political levels.”

“I think a writer’s identity is that of someone who has pledged allegiance to seeking and challenging truths. If I’m writing as I should, I am in exile from my own identity, I am challenging my own comfort zones.”

—Maaza Mengiste

Her second novel, The Shadow King, called a “lyrical, remarkable new novel” by The New York Times takes readers to 1935 Ethiopia during Mussolini’s invasion, in what many consider the first real conflict of World War II. It revolves around an army of ordinary women, since left out of the historical record, who join the front lines to fight against the fascists. Through complicated characters who face no easy answers, The Shadow King explores what it means to be a woman at war. In their starred review, Publisher’s Weekly praised Mengiste for “break[ing] new ground in this evocative, mesmerizing account of the role of women during wartime—not just as caregivers, but as bold warriors defending their country.” The Shadow King, called “one of the most beautiful novels of the year” by NPR, and was a finalist for both The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize. A film adaptation is in the works to be directed by Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou, Harriet).

“The Shadow King is a novel about war and history, both epic in scope and intimate in detail…. Maaza Mengiste has a gift for rendering everyone in this story, resister and invader alike, with great nuance and complexity, leaving us with no room for easy judgment. A wonderful book.”

—Laila Lalami, author of The Other Americans

The winner of the 2020 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Mengiste’s honors include the Creative Capital Award, a Fulbright Scholarship, and fellowships from Guggenheim, the National Endowment for the Arts and Puterbaugh Festival of International Literature & Culture. She was a Runner-Up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Beneath the Lion’s Gaze. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, BBC Radio, and Lettre International, among other places.

Mengiste was also a writer on the documentary films The Invisible City: Kakuma, about a refugee camp in the middle of the Turkana desert in Kenya that has become the region’s fastest-growing community; and Girl Rising, which tells the stories of nine girls from developing nations around the world overcoming obstacles to education and security. Girl Rising, which features the voices of Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, and Cate Blanchett, is part of the Girl Rising project, a global action campaign for girls’ education and empowerment.

Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and lived in Nigeria and Kenya before moving to the United States. She currently serves on the boards of Words Without Borders and Warscapes, and is a 2022-2023 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellow. Her next book is A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths, a novel set in Berlin during the interwar years that focuses on the lives of Afro-German models who sat for some of Germany’s greatest painters and follows their lives as Nazism takes hold of Germany. A member of Black Artists for Freedom, Mengiste teaches English at Wesleyan University.

For more information on Maaza Mengiste, please visit her on Instagram, Twitter, and at maazamengiste.com.

For all speaking related work outside North America, she is represented by Speaking Office in the UK.