UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —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 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, January 26, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.

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, Kọ́láwọle 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 was 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 program 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. Set along the trans-Saharan migration route, from Nigeria to Libya, the novel explores the current global migration crisis. It follows Rufus Tacitus, a hopeful university graduate turned accidental murderer, on an unrelenting journey of escape across the continent to the Italian coast. Bestselling author Julianna Baggott says of the novel: “I cannot think of another time in my life when I have come across a new writer as profoundly talented as Samuel Kọ́láwọlé. And his profound talent has brought us a beautifully rendered, brutal novel told with great empathy and heart. ‘The Road to Salt Sea’ has all of the markings of a masterful and enduring work of literature. And I get the feeling that Kọ́láwọlé is just warming up.”

More on Samuel Kọ́láwọlé can be found on his website: samuelkolawoleauthor.com

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 2022-23 series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.