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Sofia Samatar
| Full Name: |
Sofia
Samatar |
| Born: |
October 24, 1971
Indiana, USA |
| Occupation: |
Writer, Poet, Editor |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Links: |
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Biography
Sofia Samatar is a Somali American educator, poet and writer, the daughter of the prominent Somali scholar, historian and writer Said Sheikh Samatar, her mother a Swiss-German Mennonite from North Dakota. She has a BA in English from Goshen College and earned a Master's degree in African languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997. She subsequently completed a Ph.D. in 2013 at the institution in the same field, with a specialization in contemporary Arabic literature.
Along with her husband, Samatar taught English as a second language in Sudan for three years. They later moved to Egypt, where they served as English teachers for nine years. She speaks several languages, including Arabic and English. Additionally, she learned Swahili in college, and picked up some Zande while teaching in Sudan.
Samatar started publishing fiction in 2012. In addition to her poetry and book reviews, her short stories have been featured in a number of literary publications, including Stone Telling, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Lightspeed. Besides novels, poems and short story writing, Samatar serves as a nonfiction and poetry editor for Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts.
Samatar's writing has won the British Fantasy Award and World Fantasy Award; she has been a finalist for the Nebula, Hugo, British Science Fiction Association, World Fantasy, and Rhysling Awards and the Calvino Prize. In addition, Samatar received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Crawford Award for Best Fantasy First Novel.
Samatar is an Assistant Professor of English at the California State University Channel Islands. She is married to American writer Keith Miller, and they live in Ventura, California with their two children, Isabel and Dominic.
Works in the WWEnd Database
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