Dinaw Mengestu, 34, Washington D.C.

( Home Front Communications / October 1, 2012 )

As a writer of fiction, Mengestu has evoked the bittersweet world of Africans displaced in America. His novel "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" (2008) traces the travails of an Ethiopian refugee trying to survive in Washington, D.C. His journalism has taken him to Darfur, Uganda and Congo, where war has uprooted lives and destroyed futures. Throughout, Mengestu, who was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. as an infant, has illuminated the immigrant experience in 21st century America.