UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Nationally recognized writer 'Pemi Aguda will launch this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series with a free reading at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 11, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Aguda, who is from Lagos, Nigeria, has received O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Stories, a Hanfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize for her short stories. “Ghostroots,” her debut story collection published in 2024 by W.W. Norton, Virago, and Masobe, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her next novel, “One Leg on Earth,” is slated for release by the same publishers in 2026.
Aguda’s work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was also a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair and a 2022 MacDowell fellow.
Aguda currently serves as the Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor for Transition Magazine. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
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 2025-26 series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.