The English Department’s Annual Undergraduate Writing Contests offer students the opportunity to earn recognition and cash prizes for their fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In addition, first-place winners may opt to have their work published in the student literary journal Kalliope.
Visit the department’s writing contest page for details. Submit by Monday, January 22, 2024!
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The long-anticipated debut novel The Road to the Salt Sea by Penn State faculty member Samuel Kọ́láwọlé now has a cover!
Debutiful, a website/podcast dedicated to promoting debut authors, revealed the cover today in a news story that characterizes the book this way:
“The Road to the Salt Sea is the forthcoming debut novel from Nigerian writer Samuel Kọ́láwọlé likened to the works of Omar El Akkad and Mohsin Hamid’s. Set to release on July 2 from Amistad Press [an imprint of HarperCollins], the novel follows a lowly hotel worker whose life collides with a sex work and a dangerous guest. Throughout Kọ́láwọlé explores the Nigerian class system and how fate and fortune are fickle things.”
Read more about the book and the cover design here on Debutiful….
Pre-order a copy of The Road to the Salt Sea here!
The next Hometown Voices reading will feature Penn State creative writing faculty, Joe Bueter and Elizabeth Foulke, on Sunday, December 3, at 3pm at Tempest Studios (140 Kelly Alley, State College). See attached flyer and please share!
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Penn State W.O.R.D.S. (Writers Organized to Represent Diverse Stories) will host an open mic on December 1, 6:30 pm, Rackley Building 104. Multi-lingual poems are welcomed and encouraged!
On November 2, Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe visited Penn State and gave a reading, as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series.
In its coverage of the event, the campus student newspaper The Daily Collegian noted that Unigwe read an excerpt from her novel “The Middle Daughter,” which is a retelling of the myth of Persephone and Hades, as well as an unpublished short story set in Belgium, where Unigwe said she lived for a time.
The article by student reporter Jadzia Santiago also offered some insights from students, professors, and the author herself.
“Seeing the authors gives us that reminder that (authors) are real people and this is something that we can do,” BA/MA student Cindy Rodi said. “We can succeed in the work that we truly love.”
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé, assistant professor of English and African studies and longtime friend of Unigwe’s (featured together in below image), said it’s not possible to “tell the story of African literature in the last 20 years without mentioning (Unigwe),” who he said is “one of the major writers” in the African literature landscape.
(top photo credit: Alexandra Antoniono, Daily Collegian)
Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe 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, November 2, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Chika Unigwe has published four novels, including “On Black Sisters’ Street” (2011), which won the NLNG Prize for Literature worth $100,000; “De Zwarte Messias” (2014), a fictional rendition of the Nigerian memoirist Olaudah Equiano’s life; and a short story collection, “Better Never than Late” (2019). Her latest novel, “The Middle Daughter,” was published by Dzanc Books in April 2023. Her work has been widely translated.
Unigwe is currently a Professor at Georgia College, where she teaches in their MFA in Creative Writing program. She has served as Creative Director of the Awele Creative Trust, as a judge for the Man Booker International Prize (in 2016), and as Bonderman Professor of Creative Writing at Brown University (in 2016-17). She has been the recipient of many fellowships and has earned numerous awards for her writing. Most notably, she won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for the short story “Borrowed Smile,” and was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing for the short story “The Secret.” She writes a weekly column for the Nigerian Daily Trust.
About Unigwe’s latest novel, “The Middle Daughter,” Nigerian novelist Helon Habila observes: “Chika Unigwe’s modern retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone is pitch perfect—it is a meditation on the need we all share for belonging, and family, and love; a commentary on the journey we must all take in search of freedom.”
(author photo credit: Misan Harriman)
We welcomed 10 new students into the BA/MA program this fall 2023 to join the 9 students continuing into their second year. They come from places as far away as Bogotá, Columbia, and as nearby as Virginia, although most call Pennsylvania home. From fantastical realism to poetry to realistic non-fiction, these students each have their own artistic style. These bookworms also enjoy many other things beyond reading and writing, such as music, juggling, travel, sports, or just spending time with their loved ones. Check out the profiles of our first and second year BA/MA students on the “Student Bios” page!
Nonfiction writer and poet Kelle Groom 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, October 12, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Kelle Groom is the author of four books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. Her first memoir, “I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl,” was named New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice in 2011. The book was also named a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, Literary Journal Best Memoir, Barnes and Noble Book of the Month, Oprah O Magazine selection, and an Oxford American Editor’s pick. Her essays and poems have appeared in journals such as The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry, AGNI, American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among others.
Kelle Groom’s newest book is “How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays,” published by Tupelo Press in October 2023. Writer Nick Flynn characterizes the book this way: “Is home the place you left, or the place you are now? This is a central question in this fiercely won, wildly original, and ultimately beautiful meditation. Kelle Groom is one of our most gifted writers, and this book is her “Odyssey,” which means we will end up back where we started, only changed. Along the way we will visit strange lands, we will come face-to-face with our fears, we will find ourselves among kind strangers, and we will understand why we are alive. This is a book which wrestles with our hardest, darkest questions, and comes out on the side of gratitude.”
Groom was previously Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and Assistant Professor of Humanities at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe. Former poetry editor of The Florida Review, Groom is now a nonfiction editor for AGNI Magazine. A long-time resident of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she directed programs at the Fine Arts Work Center, she now lives in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where she is director of communications and foundation relations for Atlantic Center for the Arts.
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.
Award-winning poet and Penn State MFA grad KIMBERLY Q. ANDREWS returns to Penn State this fall to discuss and read from their new poetry collection, A Brief History of Fruit.Discover more about Andrews: https://www.kqandrews.com/
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