Dinaw Mengestu Craft Talk

Monday, October 28, 2024
4:00 PM – 5:15 PM
Coolidge Hall, room 134

Cost: Free and open to the public

The Chatham University MFA in Creative Writing program presents the 2024 Melanie Brown Lecturer: Dinaw Mengestu. He will present the below two talks on Monday, October 28.

4:00-5:15 pm — CRAFT TALK: Ethics and Writing (Coolidge Hall Rm 134)
This talk is designed for writing students and focuses on some aspect of the craft of writing. Dinaw will be speaking about “Ethics and Writing” – a mix of presentation and exercise, Q&A.

8:00-9:30 pm — PUBLIC READING (Laughlin Hall, Welker Room)
This session will feature a reading of Dinaw’s writing, most likely his recently released novel, followed by Q&A and a book signing.

Both are also accessible by Zoom:
https://chatham.zoom.us/j/6954581981


Bio:
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007). A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College, and the director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.

Location

Coolidge Hall, room 134


Contact Information

Marc Nieson
412-818-3538
mnieson@chatham.edu