Born in Addis Ababa and living in New York, Maaza Mengiste is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of writing at Queens College. In 2007, she was named New Literary Idol by New York Magazine and in 2020 she received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She is the author of The Lion's Gaze (Neri Pozza, 2010) and The Shadow King (Einaudi, 2021 and 2024), which won the 2019 The Bridge Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize, and was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, NPR, Elle, and Time.

For wetlands, he edits the afterwords series and wrote the afterword for Venezia Africana and African Venice.