Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian American novelist and writer. Recently, Dinaw Mengestu has been elected as President of PEN America, one of the world’s most important organizations defending writers and free expression.
PEN America, founded in 1922, has long stood for imprisoned and silenced writers across the globe. “Dinaw Mengestu has spent his career illuminating the borders between countries, histories, and identities, and bringing readers into the lives of those too often pushed to the margins,” said Summer Lopez, PEN America’s interim co-CEO.
“As he steps into the role of PEN America president, his unwavering commitment to free expression, his advocacy for writers under threat around the world, and his profound belief in literature’s power to humanize across deep divides will guide the organization through this pivotal moment for democracy and the written word.”
Born in Ethiopia and raised in the U.S., Dinaw’s novels include “Someone Like Us” (A journalist travels across the U.S. to unravel the secrets surrounding the life and death of his Ethiopian immigrant father and how displacement shapes identity and a sense of belonging) and “The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears” (A haunting and powerful first novel that views the streets of Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa through the eyes of Sepha who fled Ethiopia during the Revolution, and now runs a failing convenience store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington DC).
His books explore migration, identity, displacement, and people who live between worlds. Mengestu speaks with profound eloquence about the immigrant experience and his writing explores the toll and complexities of immigration from his native Ethiopia to the United States.
Sources: Wikipedia and PEN America