Sofia Samatar
| Sofia Samatar | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 24, 1971 Indiana, United States |
| Occupation | Professor, editor, poet, writer |
| Alma mater | Goshen College, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Genre | Fantasy, mythology, postmodernism |
| Notable works | A Stranger in Olondria (2013) |
| Notable awards | British Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, John W. Campbell Award, Crawford Award |
| Relatives | Said Sheikh Samatar |
| Website | |
| www |
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Sofia Samatar (born October 24, 1971) is a Somali American educator, poet and writer. She is an Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University, and serves as a nonfiction and poetry editor for Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts. In 2013, she published the award-winning fantasy novel A Stranger in Olondria.
Samatar was born in 1971 in a small town in northern Indiana, United States. Her father is the Somali scholar, historian and writer Said Sheikh Samatar. Her mother is a Swiss-German Mennonite from North Dakota. Sofia's parents met in 1970 in Mogadishu, Somalia, while her mother was teaching English.
Growing up, Samatar lived in various places around the world. She attended a Mennonite high school. For her post-secondary education, Samatar studied at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. She graduated from the institution in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. In 1997, Samatar earned a Master's degree in African languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. She subsequently completed a Ph.D. in 2013 at the institution in the same field, with a specialization in contemporary Arabic literature. She wrote her dissertation on the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih.
Samatar is married to American writer Keith Miller. They have two children, Isabel and Dominic.
Samatar speaks several languages, including Arabic and English. Additionally, she learned Swahili in college, and picked up some Zande while teaching in Sudan.
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