Dinaw Mengestu, who visited us on March 13, offers five writing tips in the latest issue of Publishers Weekly:
1. Be generous to your characters: kill them, save them, break their hearts and then heal them. Stuff them with life, emotions, histories, objects and people they love, and once you've done that, once they are bursting at the seams, strip them bare. Find out what they look like—how they stand, talk move, when they have nothing left. Now put them back together, fill them once more with life, except now leave enough room for the reader to squeeze their own heart and imagination inside.
More: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/62003-5-writing-tips-dinaw-mengestu.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly&utm_campaign=25e089a2d2-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bb2959cbb-25e089a2d2-304584381
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Monday, April 28, 2014
5 Writing Tips from Dinaw Mengestu in PW
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Front Page of NY Times Book Review: Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu, who visited us on March 13 to present his new novel All Our Names, landed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review this past Sunday.
Malcolm Jones writes: "The victories in this beautiful novel are hard fought and hard won, but won they are, and they are durable."
More in the NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu.html?_r=0
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Monday, March 10, 2014
From Africa to America: Dinaw Mengestu
Elizabeth Floyd Mair profiles Dinaw Mengestu (who visits us on Thursday) in the Times Union.
Q: How did the idea for this book come to you? Did you need to do any mapping out in advance of what would happen?
A: I began this novel while finishing my second book. It started off with a simple image/idea — a group of young friends on a college campus somewhere in Africa just after independence. I thought the story would remain there, and since I had no plan, or map for it, I had to work out the rest of the narrative slowly over the several years.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/From-Africa-to-America-5294425.php
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Dinaw Mengestu's New Novel in the NY Times
In yesterday's NY Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu, who visits us on Thursday, March 13:Dinaw Mengestu’s deeply moving new novel, “All Our Names,” takes place in the early 1970s in two worlds that could not be farther apart: a quiet, semirural town named Laurel in the American Midwest, and Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where bright hopes of independence have given way to violence, corruption and brutal government crackdowns. The young African man who transits these two worlds is named Isaac — or at least that is the name on the passport he carries. He has arrived in Laurel with a one-year student visa and is introduced to a social worker named Helen, who is supposed to be “his chaperone into Middle America — his personal tour guide of our town’s shopping malls, grocery stores, banks and bureaucracies.”
More in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/books/dinaw-mengestus-all-our-names-describes-unexpected-love.html?hpw&rref=books&_r=0
More about Mengestu's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html Read More......