Fiction writer and Penn State assistant professor Samuel Kọ́láwọlé will offer a reading as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading is free and open to the public.

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé’s work has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, Kolawolé studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa. His fiction has been supported with numerous fellowships, residencies, and scholarships, and he a finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize in 2019, and won a 2019 Editor-Writer Mentorship Program for Diverse Writers.

Kọ́láwọlé has taught creative writing in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. A graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, he returned to VCFA to join the faculty of the low-residency MFA program. In 2022, he joined the creative writing faculty at Penn State.

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé’s debut novel “The Road to Salt Sea” is forthcoming from Amistad / Harper Collins.