The Michener Center for Writers hopes you’ll join us in welcoming author Dinaw Mengestu to the Texas Union Theater on Thursday, November 5th, 2026 at 6:00pm for a reading and reception.
Please RSVP and reserve your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dinaw-mengestu-reading-reception-tickets-2003303561881
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About the Author:
Dinaw Mengetsu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo.
His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages.
He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.
We hope to see you there!
Manuel Muñoz is the author of a novel, What You See in the Dark, and the short-story collections Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been recognized with a Whiting Writer’s Award, three O. Henry Awards, and two selections in Best American Short Stories, and was awarded the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. His most recent collection, The Consequences, was published by Graywolf Press and in the UK by The Indigo Press in October 2022. It was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and longlisted for the Story Prize. It will be published in Italian by Edizioni Black Coffee and in Turkish by Livera Yayinevi. In October 2023, he was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship for “depicting with empathy and nuance the Mexican-American communities of California’s Central Valley.” His frequently anthologized work has appeared in The New York Times, Epoch, and Glimmer Train. His most recent work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, ZYZZYVA, and Freeman’s. A native of Dinuba, California, and a first-generation college student, Manuel graduated from Harvard University and received his MFA in creative writing at Cornell University. He currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.
Author, playwright, and President of PEN America, Ayad Akhtar, will read his latest work, followed by a book signing and reception at the Harry Ransom Center. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
