Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. She is the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King (2019). Her debut novel Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010) was selected by The Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, and other publications. She has held fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Creative Capital. Her work can be found in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone among other places. She was a writer on the documentary projects, Girl Rising and The Invisible City: Kakuma.
