Olakunle Ologunro wins Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in fiction at Colgate University

Lagos-born writer Olakunle Ologunro is making waves in literary circles in 2025. He is the Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Fiction at Colgate University for the 2025-2026 academic year.

Awarded by Colgate University, this fellowship offers a stipend, office space, and a supportive intellectual community for writers completing their first books. In return, fellows teach one creative writing workshop per semester.

2025 is his year of emergence as he also won the Elizabeth George Foundation Grant (2025): This grant supports the completion of his short story collection.

Ologunro holds an MFA in Fiction from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University (2024). His speciality is fiction and short stories.
🏆 Awards and Fellowships

Olakunle Ologunro has been recognised with several significant honours that support emerging writers. These include a Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a Juniper Summer Workshop Scholarship. He was named a 2025 Emerging Writer Fellow in Fiction by Aspen Words. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize..

✍️ Literary Publications

His short stories have been published in several magazines and anthologies, indicating a growing and respected body of work:

• Story Magazine.
• Lolwe
• Queer Africa anthology.
• Feel Good anthology – For this project, he contributed a story titled “The Mathematics of Hooking Up”

📚 Current Projects and Activities

• First Book: He is currently completing his first book, a collection of short stories, which was recently longlisted for the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award.

• Teaching: As part of his O’Connor Fellowship, he teaches creative writing workshops at Colgate University. His office hours are listed on the university’s directory.

• Upcoming Residency: He is scheduled to be a writer-in-residence at the KHN Center for the Arts in December 2025.