Tadias Magazine

Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin reading an article about him on the 10th issue of Tadias Magazine. (Photo © Chester Higgins, Jr.)

Tadias Magazine

By Tadias Staff

Updated: Monday, September 14, 2009

New York (TADIAS) – A new prize named after Ethiopia’s Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebremedhin has been established by the Institute of Language Studies at Addis Ababa University, Addis Journal reports.

The annual prize for students of literature and theater is intended to encourage academic excellence in the arts. The first prize was awarded to Berhanu Asfaw from the Department of Ethiopian Languages and Literature and to Tegegnto Sinshaw from the Theaters Arts Department.

The journal also notes volunteer efforts, spearheaded by Dr. Heran Serke-Berhan, to create a permanent annual stage production as a way to honor the late writer.

Tsegaye Gebremedhin, founder of the Department of Theatrical Arts at Addis Ababa University, was one of the most widely published African playwrights and poets. He is the recipient of the 1997 Honorable Poets Laureate Golden Laurel Award given by the Congress of World Poets and United Poets Laureate International. A prolific writer, both in Amharic and English, one of his best known poems “Proud to be African” has been adopted as an anthem by the African Union. He also translated the works of Shakespeare and Moliere into Amharic – including Macbeth, King Lear and Tartuffe.

Mr. Gebremedhin was born in Boda, a small village near Ambo, Ethiopia, on August 17, 1936. As a child, he received traditional church education and as a teenager attended Wingate High school in Addis Ababa. He later earned a degree from the Blackstone School of Law in Chicago (1959), followed by an educational tour to the Royal Court Theatre in London and the Comédie Française in Paris. He died on February 25, 2006, in New York, where he was receiving medical attention.

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