“Adjustment of Status” shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing, an esteemed annual award honouring outstanding African writers.

Debutiful’s Adam Vitcavage recommends noteworthy debut books for readers to discover each month.

In his wrenching and brisk debut novel, Samuel Kọ́láwọlé borrows an epigraph from the Somali British poet, Warsan Shire: “no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark.”

Countless Christian songs exalt the ableness of God, but the tune that makes up my childhood soundtrack is the one my mother, a gospel guitarist, would sing when her faith hit the rockiest of shores…

Here are 25 titles that I had the pleasure of reading and cannot wait for the rest of the world to discover.

A bracing, well-paced story of migrant desperation.

Set along the trans-Saharan migration route, the book follows a Nigerian migrant all the way from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, reflecting on the current global migration crisis.

We are delighted to announce that fiction writer Samuel Kọ́láwọlé will join the creative writing faculty as an assistant professor in the English Department at Penn State this fall…

I am glad to announce my return to my alma mater Vermont College of Fine Arts, as Faculty of the MFA in Writing Low Residency Program.

The Disappearance of Sergeant Donkey by Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé is shortlisted for the Toyin Fálọlá Prize.

Thoughts on writing The Road to the Salt Sea

"On the Map" is a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the International Writing Program's fall residency. The series is produced by the IWP at the University of Iowa and is made possible by a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Samuel Kolawole is from Nigeria and in Sitka this month as a writing fellow at the Island Institute. He is also with the international writing program at the University of Iowa.