10–11:30am | Nancy O’Brian Center | Norman North High School plus Recognition of the best NPS student work from the photography and literature workshop
Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and graduated with an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including the New York Times, BBC Radio 4, The Granta Anthology of the African Short Story, Granta magazine, and Lettre International. She is a Fulbright Scholar who has also received fellowships from the Emily Harvey Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Prague Summer Program, and Yaddo. She teaches at NYU and lives in New York City. Her debut novel, the critically acclaimed Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010), is the epic tale of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution. It has been translated into several languages and appeared on a number of “Best of 2010” lists. Her second novel (in progress), The Shadow King, is a story about Fascist Italy’s invasion and occupation of Ethiopia and the army of Ethiopian men and women who confront them.
