Poets and writers
Sofia Samatar
Sofia Samatar is an American novelist and scholar, the daughter of the Somali historian Said Sheikh Samatar. She wrote the fantasy novels A Stranger in Olondria (2013) and The Winged Histories (2016) and the memoir The White Mosque (2022), and teaches English at James Madison University.
Sofia Samatar
- Known as one of
- Poets and writers
- Era
- The Republic, 1960 to 1991; Rebuilding without a state, 1991 to 2012; Who holds power, 2012 to now
- Sources
- 1 sources
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). 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.
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).
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). 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.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Sofia Samatar · en.wikipedia.org
Sofia Samatar
- Known as one of
- Poets and writers
- Era
- The Republic, 1960 to 1991; Rebuilding without a state, 1991 to 2012; Who holds power, 2012 to now
- Sources
- 1 sources
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