Moges Kebede
Encyclopedia
Moges Kebede, sometimes credited as Moges Kebede Damte or Moges Damte, (Amharic: ሞገስ ከበደ) is an Ethiopian
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, essayist, and editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

. He is the publisher of Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper
Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper
Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper is one of the monthly magazines for the Ethiopian immigrant community in the U.S. It started with 150 copies on April 1, 2001 in the Twin Cities and now distributes 80,000 copies it to audiences nationwide...

, a monthly magazine for the Ethiopian
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 immigrant community in the United States.

Moges Kebede was born and raised in Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa
Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia...

, the capital of Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. After finishing high school, he worked as a freelance writer, contributing articles for various private newspapers and magazines and writing plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 for local theaters.

The early 1990s was a burgeoning period in the history of Ethiopian writing and journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

. The military junta
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....

 led by Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam
Mengistu Haile Mariam is a politician who was formerly the most prominent officer of the Derg, the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991...

 collapsed and was overthrown by a rebel group, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front
Tigrayan People's Liberation Front
The Tigrayan People's Liberation Front , known more commonly and sometimes pejoratively in Ethiopia as Woyane or Weyane is a political party in Ethiopia...

 (TPLF), which later evolved into the coalition Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front is the ruling political coalition in Ethiopia. It is an alliance of four other groups: the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization , the Amhara National Democratic Movement , the South Ethiopian Peoples' Democratic Front The Ethiopian People's...

 (EPRDF) that formed the transitional government.

This transition period, with its absence of governmental interference, effectively ended the almost two-decade-old ban of private media and publications. This created an opportunity for many to actively write and participate in the country's newfound free speech movement. But just a few years later, the government would eventually start to curtail some of the freedom-of-press rights which it had initially allowed to mushroom.

During these first few years, the country saw a new wave of writers, a flood of private newspapers and magazines, and the formation of the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association
Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association
The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that seeks to organize Ethiopian journalists and protect press freedoms in Ethiopia....

 or EFJA. It was during this time that Moges' work was widely published, and his writings started to appear in various citywide Addis Ababa publications . He also participated in the formation of the EFJA. In 1992, Moges published his first book, a crime novel titled Damotra
Damotra
Damotra is a 1992 crime novel written by the Ethiopian author Moges Kebede in the Amharic language.Moges immigrated to the U.S. in 1996 to Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also the editor of Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper with circulation over 8,000 in some nine U.S. cities....

, which he financed himself. The book received great reviews and popularity.

In April 1996, Moges immigrated to Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, where in April 2001 he established Mestawet Ethiopian Newspaper, the first monthly citywide Amharic language
Amharic language
Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia. It is the second most-spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Thus, it has official status and is used nationwide. Amharic is also the official or working...

 magazine with 150 copies. Though there had been past attempts to publish magazines geared toward the Ethiopian community in the Twin Cities, Mestawet was the first to achieve regular publication and become widely distributed to the area's estimated 15,000 or more immigrants from Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 and Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...

.

Beginning in 2004, Mestawet expanded its distribution throughout the U.S., reaching readers in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Seattle, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Columbus
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...

, and Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

.

By April 2005, Mestawet’s circulation had increased to 8,000 copies.

External links

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