Visiting Writers Series: Dinaw Mengestu

Due to COVID concerns, the Fall 2021 season of the Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst will be open to members of the Five Colleges with a valid school ID, and to community members with proof of a vaccination card. Recordings of our readings will be made available on the UMass English Department's YouTube Channel. Prior registration for each in-person event will be required.

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Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Foundation Genius 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 in 2007 and was named on The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. He is also the recipient of a Lannan Fiction Fellowship, The Guardian First Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other awards. He is the author of three novels: The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2008), How to Read the Air (2010), and All Our Names (2014). His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages.

Celebrating its fifty-eighth year, the nationally renowned Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. The Series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, and the English Department. Events are at 6pm. Readings are wheelchair accessible, free, and open to the public.