Aida Edemariam is an Ethiopian-Canadian journalist based in the UK, who has worked in New York, Toronto and London.[1] She was formerly deputy review and books editor of the Canadian National Post,[2] and is now a senior feature writer and editor at The Guardian in the UK. She lives in Oxford.[1] Her memoir about her Ethiopian grandmother, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History, won the Ondaatje Prize in 2019.[3][4]
Aida Edemariam | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Ethiopian, Canadian |
| Alma mater | Oxford University; University of Toronto |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Employer | The Guardian |
| Notable work | The Wife's Tale (2018) |
| Parent |
|
| Awards | Jerwood Award; Ondaatje Prize |
Biography
editEdemariam was born to an Ethiopian father and a Canadian mother. She grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto.[5]
In 2014 her then forthcoming memoir, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History[6] – the story of Edemariam's Ethiopian grandmother, Yetemegnu[7] – was awarded the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Award for a non-fiction work in progress.[8][1]
Informed by the author's 70 hours of interviews and conversations in Amharic with Yetemegnu,[9] The Wife's Tale received favourable critical on its publication in February 2018 by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins,[10][11] with the reviewer for The Times finding it "enriching",[12] and Lucy Hughes-Hallett writing in the New Statesman: "To read The Wife's Tale is not just to hear about times past and (for a western reader) far away, but to be transported into them."[13] Nilanjana Roy in The Financial Times described it as an "outstanding and unusual memoir" in which Edemariam traces a century of Ethiopian history through the life of her nonagenarian grandmother.[14] Selecting it as one of "the best books by African writers in 2019", Samira Sawlani on African Arguments concluded: "Aida Edemariam has gifted the world a priceless insight into history through her grandmother's eyes."[15]
Edemariam was awarded the Ondaatje Prize for The Wife's Tale in May 2019.[16][17]
She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[18]
References
editExternal links
edit- Aida Edemariam page at The Guardian.