Maaza Mengiste has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow and will receive the foundation’s $800,000 no-strings-attached grant, given to individuals recognised for exceptional creativity and promise of important future advances based on track record of significant accomplishments. The foundation describes her as a fiction writer who, “through a compelling blend of history, memory, and imagination . . . is revealing new insights into the human costs of political violence.”
The MacArthur Fellowship, established in 1981, is designed differently from many major literary and arts awards. Rather than funding a particular book or project, it gives recipients unrestricted financial support intended to create the freedom to pursue their own artistic, intellectual, and professional work. Fellows are selected through a confidential nomination and review process; they do not apply for the fellowship themselves.
The money is paid in quarterly instalments over five years, with no restrictions on how recipients use the money and no reporting requirements. The foundation says the programme is an investment in “a person’s originality, insight, and potential,” rather than a lifetime achievement award.
Mengiste, a Professor of English at Wesleyan University, told the university about the award: “I just feel completely grateful and humbled. I want to make good use of the time and a bit of the inspiration that this allows, the flexibility, [so] I can now push even further in my work.”
Mengiste was Open Country Mag‘s second cover star, back in January 2021. The accompanying Profile by our editor Otosirieze, titled “Maaza Mengiste’s Chronicles of Ethiopia,” examined her work exploring the Ethiopian Revolution and the Italo-Abyssinian War, from her novels Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Shadow King to her photography archive Project 3541.
She is now the third African writer and second Ethiopian to receive the grant. Nigeria’s Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was the first in 2008, followed by Mengiste’s countryman, Dinaw Mengestu, in 2012. Another notable recipient was the Ghanaian educator and entrepreneur Patrick Awuah in 2015, for developing a new model of higher education ithrough Ashesi University.
The 2026 class of 20 winners also includes poet Layli Long Soldier, artist Christine Sun Kim, historian Elizabeth Ellis, choreographer and dancer Trajal Harrell, saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins, and fiction writer Bryan Washington.
A Maaza Mengiste MacArthur Grant is overdue. We congratulate her!
