Maaza Mengiste is a novelist, essayist and photographer. She is the author of Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (W.W. Norton, 2010), named one of the ten best contemporary African books by the Guardian; and The Shadow King (W.W. Norton, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize and named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, Guardian, Time, Elle, and others. She is the editor of Addis Ababa Noir (Akashic Books, 2019) and was named a winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Short Story. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Scholars Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, DAAD, and others. Her writing and teaching focus on the individual lives at stake during conflict, migration, and political upheaval, and the intersections of photography and war. Her essays have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Guardian, Esquire, Granta, and Rolling Stone. Maaza Mengiste’s current book project, A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths, is a novel set during the interwar years in Germany and considers the lives of Black Germans as Nazism rises.