Meron Hadero | |
---|---|
Born | Addis Ababa, Ethiopia |
Occupation | Short story writer |
Nationality | Ethiopian American |
Alma mater | Princeton University University of Michigan (MFA) Yale Law School (JD) |
Period | ?–present |
Genre | Literary fiction |
Notable works | A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times (2022) |
Notable awards | Yaddo, Ragdale, MacDowell fellowships |
Website | |
www |
Meron Hadero is an Ethiopian American writer. [1] She is known for her debut collection, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times published in 2022 by Restless Books.
An immigrant to Germany residing in United States, she earned her degree in history from Princeton University, MFA from University of Michigan and JD from Yale Law School. [2]
Hadero's work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories , Ploughshares , Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern , Zyzzyva , Addis Ababa Noir, [3] and 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology. She has received the Yaddo, Ragdale, and MacDowell fellowships and was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University.
Her debut short story collection, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, was published in 2022 by Restless Books. It won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing [4] and "The Street Sweep", included, won the Caine Prize for African Writing. [5] It was also a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize in 2023.
In addition to writing, Meron served as a research analyst for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. [2]
Year | Title | Award | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2020 | A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times α | Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing | Winner | [4] |
2021 | "The Street Sweep" | Caine Prize for African Writing | Winner | [6] |
2023 | A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times | Hurston/Wright Legacy Award | Winner | [7] [8] |
PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize | Finalist | [9] |
Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, an autobiography, ethnographies, and many essays.
Addis Ababa Bole International Airport is an international airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is in the Bole district, 6 km (3.7 mi) southeast of the city centre and 65 km (40 mi) north of Bishoftu. The airport was formerly known as Haile Selassie I International Airport. It is the main hub of Ethiopian Airlines, the national airline that serves destinations in Ethiopia and throughout the African continent, as well as connections to Asia, Europe, North America and South America. The airport is also the base of the Ethiopian Aviation Academy. As of June 2018, nearly 380 flights per day were using the airport.
The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual literary award for the best short story by an African writer, whether in Africa or elsewhere, published in the English language. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2000, the £10,000 prize was named in memory of businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Caine, former chairman of Booker Group and of the Booker Prize management committee. The Caine Prize is sometimes called the "African Booker". The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019.
Sefi Atta is a Nigerian-American novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her books have been translated into many languages, her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and her stage plays have been performed internationally. Awards she has received include the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her licence ès lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
Mat Johnson is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists.
Chika Nina Unigwe is a Nigerian-born Igbo author who writes in English and Dutch. In April 2014, she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Previously based in Belgium, she now lives in the United States.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006) is a collection of short stories by African-American author Edward P. Jones; it was his first book after winning the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for The Known World. The collection of 14 stories centers on African Americans in Washington D.C. during the 20th century. The stories can be broken down by how the characters suffer burdens from families, society, and themselves. "Each story traces a journey--planned or unplanned, taken or failed--and an obvious root/route symbolism runs throughout the collection." Jones is noted for writing long short stories and these are no exception, they are sometimes called "novelistic", characters are fully fleshed out.
Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer. Her novels include Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.
Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer. Her short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction in 2003 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Africa Region in 2006. Stories in it were finalists for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005. She was a Caine Prize finalist for the third time in 2021 and has received many other awards listed below.
Benny Daniel, better known by his pen name Benyamin, is an Indian writer in Malayalam from Kerala. He is the author of about thirty books in various genres – from short stories to novels and memoirs. For his novel Goat Days (Aadujeevitham), he won the Abu Dhabi Sakthi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and JCB Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. The novel Manthalirile 20 Communist Varshangal won the Vayalar Award in 2021.
Chinelo Okparanta is a Nigerian-American novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where she was raised until the age of 10, when she emigrated to the United States with her family.
Elnathan John is a Nigerian novelist, satirist and lawyer whose stories have twice been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Restless Books is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 2013 and was based in Brooklyn, New York until 2023. Restless publishes "international works of fiction, journalism, memoirs, travel writing, and illustrated books." The press published 15-20 titles a year, including authors Ruth Ozeki, Lana Bastašić, Yishai Sarid, Andrea Chapela, Tash Aw, Chris Abani, Gabriela Wiener, and Giacomo Sartori. It includes the Yonder imprint for younger readers.
Lesley Nneka Arimah is a Nigerian writer. She has been described as "a skillful storyteller who can render entire relationships with just a few lines of dialogue" and "a new voice with certain staying power." She is the winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O. Henry Prize, the 2017 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing.
Irenosen Iseghohi Okojie FRSL is a Nigerian-born novelist and short-story writer working in London, England. Her stories incorporate speculative elements and also make use of her West African heritage. Her first novel, Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask Award in 2016, and her story "Grace Jones" won the 2020 Caine Prize for African Writing. Okojie was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) in 2018, and in 2020 was appointed a vice-chair of the RSL.
Last of Her Name is a collection of stories by Mimi Lok, published by Kaya Press in October 2019. It won the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short story collection and is the finalist for 2020 National Magazine Award, The California Independent Bookseller Alliance ‘Golden Poppy’ Book Awards 2020, and CLMP Firecracker Award.
Jamel Brinkley is an American writer. His debut story collection, A Lucky Man (2018), was the winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award, The Story Prize, the John Leonard Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. He currently teaches fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times is a 2022 short stories collection by Ethiopian-American writer Meron Hadero. Her debut short stories collection, it won the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and was published by Restless Books in 2022. The short stories collection includes "The Street Sweep" which won the 2021 Caine Prize.