UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Critically acclaimed 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, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Kọ́láwọlé’s fiction has been supported with numerous fellowships, residencies and scholarships, and it has appeared in publications such as AGNI, New England Review, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, and Image Journal. He has received the Editor-Writer Program Award for Diverse Writers and has been a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, and the United Kingdom’s The First Novel Prize.
Kọ́láwọlé latest novel, “The Road to the Salt Sea,” is a finalist for the International Book Awards and currently longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize.
Born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, Kọ́láwọle studied at the University of Ibadan and received a master’s degree with distinction in creative writing from Rhodes University in South Africa. He is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Program in writing and publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts and a former faculty member for its low-residency MFA program.
Kọ́láwọlé taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden and elsewhere in the United States before joining the Penn State faculty as assistant professor of English and African studies in 2022. He also is currently a faculty member for the low-residency Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the 2024-25 series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.