Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Foundation Award, was born in Ethiopia and raised in Illinois. His fiction and journalism have been published in the New Yorker, Granta, Harper's, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times. Mengestu was chosen for the 5 under 35 Award by the National Book Foundation and was named on The New Yorker's '20 under 40' list in 2010. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lannan Fiction Fellowship, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other awards.
He is the author of four novels: Children of the Revolution, How to Read the Air, All Our Names, and Someone Like Us. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and the Director of the Written Arts program and the Center for Ethics and Writing.