Description
Olufunke Grace Bankole, winner of the 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for The Edge of Water, gives a reading and participates in a moderated Q&A session about the writing and publishing of her book. The Edge of Water is the winner of the Westport Prize for Literature as well as the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award.
Mariah Rigg writes in Electric Literature, “Exploring the narrative powers of choice and betrayal, the complexity of identity and belonging, and the many revisions that take place across a family and a life, The Edge of Water asks the question of how much we owe our loved ones, how much we owe ourselves, how much we control our destiny, and when it’s okay to let ourselves off the hook.”
The event is free and open to all and will be held in person but will also be live streamed through Zoom. The in-person location will be James Branch Cabell Library, Room 303, 901 Park Ave., Richmond, Va. 23219. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street, West Main Street and West Cary Street parking decks.
Registration
Registration information forthcoming.
About the Author
Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, and Stand Magazine. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and has received a Pushcart Special Mention for her writing. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
For special accommodations or to register offline contact Ryan Larson, event manager, at (804) 828-0593 or rbpander@vcu.edu.
Sponsors
The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is presented on behalf of VCU’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program. Sponsors include: the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Libraries, the Friends of VCU Libraries, the VCU Department of English and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.
For more information please visit our First Novelist web page