The Politics of Aesthetics: The Danger of Writing from the ‘Margins’

The Whitney Humanities Center is pleased to announce that acclaimed journalist, essayist, and novelist Dinaw Mengestu will deliver the Finzi-Contini lecture on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. His talk, “The Politics of Aesthetics: The Danger of Writing from the ‘Margins,’” will take place at 5 pm in the WHC Auditorium at 53 Wall Street. Mengestu will join in conversation with Yale professors Hazel Carby and Alice Kaplan on Wednesday, March 2, at 10:30 am in the Auditorium. Both events are free and open to the public. 

Dinaw Mengestu came to the United States with his family from Ethiopia at the age of two. Since earning his MFA at Columbia University in 2005, he has published three novels, all of them New York Times Notable Books, including his most recent, All Our Names. A 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Mengestu also earned a 2007 National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” Award and was included on the New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” list in 2010. He is the recipient of a Lannan Fiction Fellowship, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among numerous other awards. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages. 

Also a freelance journalist who has reported from sub-Saharan Africa about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo, Mengestu has had his work published in Harper’s, Granta, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, and the New York Times.

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