Ledio Cakaj
Ledio Cakaj is an Albanian American writer and former US diplomat. He was born in communist Albania, crossed into Greece illegally at sixteen, claimed asylum in England with a fake Kosovar birth certificate, and made it eventually to Oxford, Princeton, and the US State Department. His memoir-in-progress traces that journey through the identity documents that made and unmade him.
His first book, When the Walking Defeats You (Zed Books, 2016), was called “important and deeply moving” by the Washington Post and published as an extract in the Guardian. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the BBC, and The Quietus, among others. A piece from his memoir is forthcoming in the New Yorker in August 2026.
He lives between Washington DC and Tirana.
Ledio Cakaj 