# Sofia Samatar

> Sofia Samatar: novelist (A Stranger in Olondria), daughter of historian Said Samatar.

Source page: https://calankii.com/en/people/sofia-samatar/
Last checked: 2026-11-12
Publisher: Calankii (https://calankii.com)

## Who is she?

Sofia Samatar is an American scholar, novelist and teacher from Indiana, and an associate professor of English at James Madison University ([Wikipedia, Sofia Samatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Samatar)). Her father was the Somali historian and writer Said Sheikh Samatar, and her mother is a Swiss-German Mennonite from North Dakota (same source). Her parents met in Mogadishu in 1970, where her mother was teaching English (same source). See [Said Samatar](/en/people/said-samatar/).

## Education

She graduated in English from Goshen College, earned a master's in African languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1997, and a PhD in contemporary Arabic literature in 2013 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Samatar)).

## Books

Her first novel, *A Stranger in Olondria*, was published by Small Beer Press in 2013, followed by the companion novel *The Winged Histories* in 2016 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Samatar)). With her brother she made *Monster Portraits* (2018), illustrated prose poems (same source). Her memoir *The White Mosque* (2022) follows a trip to Uzbekistan (same source). Later books include the novella *The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain* (2024) and *Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life* (2024) (same source). She lists Somali mythology among her influences (same source).

## In short

A novelist and scholar, daughter of a Somali historian, known for *A Stranger in Olondria*.

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