Every year, Colgate University awards the O’Connor Fellowship to two budding writers who have yet to publish their first book. The program began in 2008 and has since helped support many impressive careers in the field. The fellowship is highly competitive as Colgate’s creative writing staff meticulously sifts through more than 100 applications.
Olakunle Ologunro and Ziyuan Tang are the latest recipients of this prestigious honor. Over the last academic year, these two talented young authors have been working on their own writing while simultaneously divulging their knowledge and experience to Colgate creative writing students. The two authors gave excerpted readings from their latest works to the Colgate community on April 23. Both authors’ works were notable for the sophistication of their form, their ability to infuse humor into difficult subject material and their innovation unique to their personalities.
Ologunro is from Lagos, Nigeria. Over the years, he has received many awards and recognitions for his talents, including an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship, a Juniper Summer Workshop Scholarship and a Pushcart Prize. His works have been published in several prominent publications.
Ologunro’s reading of his unfinished novel was a unique treat for everyone in attendance, as Ologunro is known for keeping his work close to the chest. The work examines the life of a young girl in Nigeria who navigates her upbringing in a highly religious household and Nigerian society. Ologunro draws on exposures from his own childhood, such as experiences with Pentecostal Christian and family dynamics, in this story. The story focuses on a young girl with a highly devout mother, whose religious devotion is omnipresent, and a secular Dad. This story structure and cast of characters, which focuses on subjects of religion and a heterosexual household, is not typical for Ologunro, who has done much for gay fiction. However, this story was inspired by a voice in his mind that would not leave him alone.
“Sometimes there’s just sort of a voice talking to me, and I begin to wonder ‘what does this voice want to say?’” Ologunro said. “I feel like this voice has followed me around for the longest time and… listening to this voice is what it’s all about.”
Ologunro’s passion for the novel was clear in his delivery, as he read through the first chapter, which introduces the main character of the novel and her family and the country of Nigeria.
“This novel that I’m working on also spans out into society,” said Ologunro. “I’m interested in how what we fail to kill in the family grows out into society and becomes a huge problem. I realized that not everything that is regular and commonplace for me is not typical for you. I am presenting with this an idea of law and discipline as well.”
The other O’Connor fellow, Ziyuan Tang, is from Beijing, China. Over her career thus far, she has proven herself to be a talented poet, educator and translator of Chinese literature. She is the recipient of the Hurley Prize in Poetry, the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston University and has been recognized in competitions including the Portrait Prize. Tang’s poetry does not just use the medium as a way to understand the world, but also as a means to interrogate the art form itself. Her poetry seeks to understand both itself and the world and, in that way, is a deeply human endeavor that is imminently captivating.
“If I have to speak honestly about my work, I have to begin with my central difficulty, which is also paradoxically my work’s engine. It is an excess of meta awareness,” Tang said. “My poems are like me in this way: they circle their own awareness, their own intention.”
Tang recited various works, but the most notable and innovative was the opening collection. These poems were focused on a concept she describes as “embodied titling,” which is when the title of the poem does not function as a pretext, a theme or a summary for the work. Instead, it functions as its spatial and conceptual feel, where the poem does not describe the title, but lives inside it.
Tang felt that the first two poems were examples of what embodied titling is meant to accomplish, as the poems would tie back to the physical and conceptual dimensions of the title. However, the third one she recited, she described as a failure of an embodied poem. This display of vulnerability in Tang’s own work hints at the thought and trial behind the task.
Sophomore Maile Raff was especially drawn to the unconventional nature of Tang’s works.
“The meta nature of her poetry is deeply profound and interesting,” Raff said. “I have worked with her on some of my own poetry. Getting to hear her own poems in her own voice was great.”
