Congratulation Dinaw!!

Ethiopia born Dinaw Mengistu is one of the recipient of this year’s $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant. The 34-year-old author of the novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air, was awarded his MacArthur grant for "enriching the understanding of the little-explored world of the African diaspora in America in tales distilled from the experience of immigrants whose memories are seared by escape from violence in their homelands".

Twenty-three new MacArthur fellows were named by the MacArthur Foundation yesterday. They will each receive a no-strings-attached grant of $500,000 over the next five years – widely known as a "genius" grant – to allow them "unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore".

Dinaw said that when he received the phone call about the $500,000 grant, he was in Africa, at a books festival in Nairobi. "It was obviously amazingly overwhelming and at the same time felt remarkably appropriate to be there and to be in a community that I felt I was desperately trying to reach out to," said the author and journalist. "Part of what the MacArthur fellowship does is remind me that the work I've done is relevant – not necessarily what I write about, but the people who populate my work. That those people have significance and meaning that sometimes might be overshadowed or lost in the larger narrative of the world, and it's important to keep writing out of those experiences."

Robert Gallucci, the president of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, said that this year's 23 fellows "demonstrate the power of creativity”.

"The MacArthur fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future," he said. "We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world."

From The Guardian