Aida Edemariam

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]

Biography

Aida 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
  1. "Aida Edemariam page". Rogers, Coleridge & White. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  2. Aida Edemariam (27 September 2002). "Us? Boring? Ha!". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  3. Kerr, Michael (13 May 2019). "Aida Edemariam's lyrical biography of Ethiopia wins Ondaatje Prize". The Telegraph.
  4. "Aida Edemariam wins Ondaatje Prize for vivid biography of her Ethiopian grandmother". London, UK: Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. 15 May 2019.
  5. "Aida Edemariam Books & Biography". Harper Collins. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  6. "The Wife's Tale : A Personal History", Book Depository.
  7. "The Wife's Tale" at NetGallery.
  8. "RSL Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction 2014", Royal Society of Literature, December 2014.
  9. Sue Carter, "Author Aida Edemariam tells stories of Ethiopia through grandmother's eyes" Archived 15 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Metro (Toronto), 22 February 2018.
  10. Ammara Isa, "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam" Archived 15 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine, IndieThinking at HarperCollins UK.
  11. The Wife's Tale, Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-0007459605.
  12. Ysenda Maxtone Graham, "Review: The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam — famine, Red Terror and grief in Ethiopia", The Times, 17 February 2018.
  13. Lucy Hughes-Hallett, "The Wife's Tale: Aida Edemariam's vivid portrait of her 95-year-old Ethiopian grandmother", New Statesman, 11 February 2018.
  14. "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam — hard times: A vivid family portrait brings a century of Ethiopian history to life", Financial Times, 16 February 2018.
  15. Samira Sawlani, "The best books by African writers in 2019 so far…", African Arguments, 16 July 2019.
  16. Alison Flood, "Ondaatje prize: Aida Edemariam wins for vivid biography of her grandmother", The Guardian, 13 May 2019.
  17. Heloise Wood, "Edemariam wins £10k Ondaatje Prize for 'outstanding' family memoir", The Bookseller, 14 May 2019.
  18. "New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby", Reading to Transgress, 9 March 2020.
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