Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.
His fiction has been supported with fellowships, residencies, and scholarships from the Norman Mailer Center, International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Columbus State University's Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Clarion West Writers Workshop, Wellstone Center in the Redwoods, California, and Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. 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.
Samuel has taught creative writing in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. He is the Founder and Director of Writers' Studio, Nigeria's flagship creative writing school.
Kọ́láwọlé studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa. 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. Kọ́láwọlé teaches full-time at Pennsylvania State University, where he is a tenure track Assistant Professor of English. His debut novel is forthcoming from Amistad / Harper Collins.
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