Clemantine Wamariya

Clemantine Wamariya was born in Kigali, Rwanda in 1988 to a Tutsi family. When she was six years old, the Rwandan Genocide broke out when the Hutu people attempted to exterminate the Tutsis. Wamariya was forced to flee Rwanda with her sister Claire. They migrated through seven African countries, staying with family and in refugee camps and suffering starvation, violence, and degradation. When Wamariya was 12, she and Claire immigrated to the United States. Wamariya stayed with a host family in Chicago, Illinois while she attended high school. During this time, she wrote an essay on Elie Wiesel’s book Night, which won an Oprah essay award. To recognize this achievement, Oprah welcomed Wamariya and Claire on the Oprah Winfrey Show and surprised them by reuniting them with their estranged family. Wamariya eventually went on to attend Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and went on to receive a BA in comparative literature from Yale University. Having become internationally famous after her appearance on Oprah, Wamariya went on to pursue a career as a public speaker and human rights activist. She gave a TED Talk titled “War and What Comes After” and spoke on the behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, of which she was appointed a board member by Barack Obama. After graduating Yale, Wamariya met Elizabeth Weil, and the two co-authored The Girl Who Smiled Beads, publishing it in 2018. Wamariya currently lives in San Francisco. Wamariya’s coauthor, Elizabeth Weil, also attended Yale University. After graduating, Weil moved to New York City and wrote for The New York Times. Along with the Times, she is also a frequent contributor to Outside and Vogue magazine. She wrote two nonfiction books, No Cheating, No Dying and They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus, before co-authoring The Girl Who Smiled Beads with Wamariya. She has received various awards for her travel writing, feature reporting, and coverage of LGBTQ issues. Her work has also been recognized for its excellence in writing about trauma. She and her husband have two daughters and live in San Francisco.