This event was recorded on September 22, 2022 at Pitkin County Library, as part of the 2022 Aspen Words Writers in Residence program, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
Tochukwu Okafor is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in the 2019 Best Small Fictions, the 2018 Best of the Net, The Guardian, Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Columbia Journal and elsewhere. He is a 2022 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (MASS MoCA) Fellow and Artist-in-Residence, a 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a 2021 GrubStreet Emerging Writer Fellow, a 2021 Jack Straw Writing Fellow, a 2021 Gish Jen Fiction Fellow, a 2021 Wellstone Center in the Redwoods (WCR) Writing Fellow, a 2021 Sundress Academy for the Arts Writer-in-Residence Fellow, a 2021 Bethany Arts Community Artist-in-Residence, a 2021 Frank Conley Memorial Scholar, a 2021 Albertina Tholakele Dube Scholar for Young Writers, a 2021 Longleaf Writers Conference BIPOC Scholar and an alumnus of the 2021 Tin House Workshop. He is also a 2018 Rhodes Scholar finalist, a 2018 Kathy Fish Fellow and winner of the 2017 Short Story Day Africa Prize for Short Fiction. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is an MFA Fiction candidate at Emerson College, holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and has received scholarships and fellowship grants from the Under the Volcano Writers’ Workshop, Worcester Arts Council, Kundiman, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Etisalat (now 9mobile), the MTN Foundation, the Boston Writers of Color Group and Exxon Mobil. He lives in Worcester, MA and is at work on a novel and a story collection. He is on Twitter @toch_okafor and Instagram @tochukwu_okafor.
Aspen Words offers year round programs in Aspen and throughout the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado. This conversation is part of the 2022 Summer Writers in Residence program which helps developing authors by providing them time, space, and living accommodations in the Elk Mountains. Each writer spends three weeks in Woody Creek, CO, focusing on a current project, and gives free community talks and readings as part of their Aspen experience.