Maaza Mengiste’s writing and teaching focus on the individual lives at stake during conflict, migration, and political upheaval, as well as the intersections of photography and war. She is the author of Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (W.W. Norton, 2010) and The Shadow King (W.W. Norton, 2019), and the editor of Addis Ababa Noir (Akashic Books, 2019). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Guardian, Esquire, Granta, and Rolling Stone, amongst other places. Maaza Mengiste’s current book project, A Brief Portrait of Small Deaths, is a novel set during the interwar years and considers the lives of Black Germans as Nazism rises.