Girma Fantaye
Girma Fantaye is a journalist, writer and poet from Ethiopia, and has been writing for print and web publications since 2004. His articles on politics, social matters, arts and travel, along with his short stories, have appeared in publications including the Meznagna newspaper and magazine, Ethiomirror.com, Addis Neger newspaper and website, and The New York Times.
Mr Fantaye co-founded Addis Neger, an independent Amharic-language weekly political newspaper based in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, along with five other journalists in 2007. He worked as Addis Neger’s deputy editor-in-chief and political and economic section editor until his departure from Ethiopia and the paper’s closure in December 2009. He then worked as deputy editor-in-chief of the online version of Addis Neger, www.addisnegeronline.com, which he set up together with some of the paper’s other former staff members in exile in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
In 2011-2012, Mr Fantaye was awarded a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University, USA, where he focused on a project aimed at making exile media more sustainable. In 2012 he published his first volume of poetry, The Quest for the Lost City (Mahlet Publishing, Addis Ababa, 2012). He also published his debut novel in Amharic entitled “SELF Meda”(Field of Queue) in August 2014 and is currently working on publishing his works in other languages.
In addition to journalism, Mr Fantaye has experience in teaching Ethiopian history and politics, and translates from English to Amharic. Having studied business at Addis Ababa University College of Commerce, he has also set up various social enterprise ventures. Girma Fantaye was Ljubljana City of Refuge's guest writer from 2013 to 2015.
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