The Daily Freeman is reporting writer Dinaw Mengestu has been named Bard College's Catherine T. MacArthur Professor in the Humanities for the spring semester. Mengestu was a recipient of the 2012 MacArthur Foundation Award, and is currently serving as director of the Written Arts Program at Bard. He is the author of three novels: "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears," "How to Read the Air" and "All Our Names." Mengestu was born in Ethiopia and raised in Illinois. His fiction and journalism have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, Harper’s, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. Mengestu is also the recipient of a Lannan Fiction Fellowship, The Guardian First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages. Mengestu holds a bachelor of arts degree from Georgetown University and a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University. He has been a member of the Bard faculty since 2016. Read more in the Daily Freeman.